North Coast’s Democratic lawmakers eye supermajority and pusback against Trump
California’s Democratic lawmakers, who will have virtually unchecked policymaking power next year, will use it to resist moves by the Trump administration to reverse the state’s policy on issues like health care and environmental protection, while pressing for major expenditures on road maintenance funded by new taxes and fees.
Last month’s election put 27 Democrats in the 40-member state Senate and 55 in the 80-member Assembly, numbers that add up to a unilateral two-thirds majority for the party - known as a supermajority - in both chambers.
Without the need for a single Republican vote nor fear of a gubernatorial veto, the Democrats can raise taxes, change political ethics laws, place constitutional amendments on the ballot and override a veto, should it come from Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown, who exercises that power sparingly.
Democrats in Sacramento - along with many of the nearly 8.8 million Californians who voted for Hillary Clinton - are bracing for dramatic changes in policy from President-elect Donald Trump, who is stocking his cabinet with nominees at odds with current policies on issues like global warming, immigration, health insurance and oil-drilling bans off the coast.
With their supermajority, the state’s lawmakers say they can push back.
“Democrats will stand in solidarity against Trump initiatives that strike at the heart of everything Californians hold precious,” said Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, whose district extends into Santa Rosa.
Levine, who said he was “horrified by Trump’s election,” said that any effort by the Trump administration to erase rights enjoyed by Californians would prompt an “equal and opposite reaction” by the Legislature.
Lawmakers can “immediately react” to steps by the Republican administration, such as opening state lands and water to energy development, with emergency countermeasures they can pass with a supermajority, state Sen. Mike McGuire, D-Healdsburg said.
“We are going to fight any recommendations from the Trump administration that will harm California and the progress we have made over the past decade,” he said.
Fight already has begun
The fight started Monday at the Assembly and Senate swearing-in ceremonies, normally times for handshakes and photos. Both chambers passed non-binding resolutions asking federal officials to not seek the mass deportation of immigrants and continue to issue work permits to young people in the country illegally who were brought here as children.
The Assembly vote was 57-14, with two Republicans - including Catharine Baker of San Ramon, the Bay Area’s lone Republican legislator - joining the Democratic bloc. In the Senate, all 27 Democrats prevailed against three Republican nays and 10 abstentions.
Assemblyman Travis Allen, a Republican from Huntington Beach, wrote on Breitbart.com that Democrats had “set aside reason and embraced hysteria” by adopting a “belligerent proclamation that seemingly supports California’s immigrant population but in reality stokes immigrant anxieties for Democratic political gain.”
Also on Monday, San Diego Democratic Sen. Ben Hueso introduced a bill that would fund legal representation for noncitizens facing deportation, and Assemblyman Rob Bonta, D-Oakland, introduced a measure that would train public defenders on immigration law.
McGuire and Assemblyman Jim Wood, D-Healdsburg, share a concern for the fate of the Affordable Care Act, President Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement that Republicans are intent on unraveling.
“A repeal without some sort of alternative, in my opinion, would cause health care chaos,” said Wood, a dentist who chairs the Assembly Health Committee.
Congressional Republicans are coalescing around a plan to begin repealing Obamacare next month, while deferring the effective date, possibly for several years, allowing time to craft a replacement.
McGuire noted that 3.8 million low-income Californians have health insurance through the act’s expansion of Medi-Cal and the state depends on billions of federal dollars to help cover the cost.
If Congress slashed the funding, California would face a dilemma, the lawmakers said.
“That discussion is happening today,” McGuire said, with one option being litigation to tie up the cutback in the courts.
“Anything and everything is on the table,” Wood said. The idea of California establishing its own health care single-payer system hasn’t yet been discussed, he said.
“The problem with single-payer is we don’t have the funding to support it,” Wood said.
Republicans could also curtail funding for safety net programs like CalFresh, which provides food assistance to more than 4 million low-income Californians with federal funding covering 88 percent of the cost, McGuire said.
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