Look to ‘Budget Nun’ for truth on health plan

Who knows? Twenty years from now, Californians may look back at Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as courageous visionaries for championing healthcare reform.

These could be the “good ol’ days” when fearless leaders forged ahead, undeterred by a projected $14.5-billion budget hole, and crafted a $14.4-billion government expansion of healthcare -- requiring affordable medical insurance for practically every Californian.

They ignored guys like me who wrote that the governor should “pull the plug” on drawn-out healthcare negotiations and focus solely on bailing out the badly listing ship of state.

But because Schwarzenegger truly was an action governor and the Democratic speaker cast partisanship aside, all children were provided medical care. Adults no longer were denied insurance merely because they’d had a prior serious illness.

Unemployed people in their vulnerable 50s, not old enough for Medicare, finally obtained affordable insurance. Local clinics were expanded to make healthcare more accessible.

The state’s sinking ship ultimately righted itself. The fiscal storm blew over and was soon forgotten.

As Republican Mayor Alan Autry of Fresno said during a celebratory cast-of-thousands news conference in the Capitol rotunda after Assembly passage of the healthcare bill: “We have some tough budget times ahead of us, but it’s un-American to let our condition of the moment dictate our vision.

“If that [were] the case, we would have never made it out of the Great Depression.”

That’s one scenario.

Here’s another:

Schwarzenegger and Nunez in the future will be derided as reckless, self-promoting fools who cobbled together an under-funded scheme that finally bankrupted the state.

Raising the cigarette tax $1.50 per pack to help finance healthcare expansion? Talk about delusional! Tobacco use continues to decline -- and it will even more steeply when the cigarette tax is nearly doubled. Combine declining tax revenue with escalating medical costs and that’s a formula for a busted program.

Moreover, many small businesses that don’t already provide medical insurance will go belly up trying to pay a new employer fee into a state pool created to help workers obtain coverage.

Universal healthcare in California will be looked back upon as a cruel hoax that raised false hopes and finally had to be abandoned, making the public even more cynical of Sacramento.

“A phony solution to a real problem,” Assemblyman Anthony Adams (R-Hesperia) declared during the Assembly debate Monday.

Assembly GOP Leader Mike Villines of Clovis: “This is lying to hard-working Californians.”

Nunez then rose and asserted that what the public likes most about Schwarzenegger is that “he’s not driven by the ideology of the Republican Party, or the ideology of any party.”

The bill passed on a party-line 45-31 vote.

Nobody knows how this will turn out -- neither the policy nor the politics.

The “Budget Nun,” as she’s called, will guide politicians on the policy.

Nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Elizabeth G. Hill was dubbed the Budget Nun years ago because her fiscal reports are incorruptible. They’re the bible in the Capitol. The one source of truth.

Senate President Pro Tem Don Perata (D-Oakland) -- both supportive and leery of healthcare reform -- performed the Capitol’s most responsible act this week by asking Hill to closely examine the Schwarzenegger-Nunez compromise and determine its long-range risk to the state general fund. Does this plan really pencil out?

Perata acted as the bill was moving through the Assembly at gale speed, with only one pro forma committee hearing a few hours before the house vote.

Schwarzenegger and Nunez are pressuring the Senate to pass the bill by mid-January, at the latest, so voter signatures for a companion healthcare financing initiative can be collected in time to qualify it for the November ballot.

The initiative is necessary because GOP lawmakers won’t vote for a tax increase.

It’s bold and brazen: The majority party going around the minority party with an initiative. Never before have lawmakers proposed such a hybrid species: a bill merged with an initiative.

Before the Assembly vote, Perata had balked at moving swiftly, declaring in a statement: “It would be imprudent and impolitic to support an expansion of healthcare coverage without knowing how we’re going to pay for vital health programs the state now provides for poor children, their families and the aged, blind and disabled.”

Those programs are expected to be slashed by the governor when he proposes a new state budget Jan. 10 -- at the same time he’s pushing for healthcare expansion. Even Schwarzenegger may not be able to sell that incongruous combo.

Reading Perata is difficult. There must be another motive besides good government.

He and Nunez aren’t exactly best buddies. But that doesn’t really explain his reluctance to partner up with the Los Angeles lawmaker and the governor. I suspect the Senate leader is using healthcare as leverage to drive a bargain on his pet issue: water. He’d like Schwarzenegger to de-emphasize dams and Nunez to sign off on any deal.

“Don Perata’s the guy in the driver’s seat with the hands on the wheel,” says Democratic consultant Darry Sragow, a strategist for AARP, which supports the Schwarzenegger-Nunez bill.

Could be. But the most influential person in the Capitol on healthcare right now is the Budget Nun. Her word will be gospel. Not only Perata, but Nunez and Schwarzenegger would be wise to heed her admonitions. She can help elevate them to the true status of historic visionaries.

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george.skelton@latimes.com