Every Move of California Legislators Motivated by Term Limits Reform? Where's the Proof?

[courtesy of The California Majority Report]

Cross-posted on the California Progress Report.

I was taught in law school to treat with suspicion and closely examine any sentence that starts off with the phrase, "It is clear that..." and assertions made without evidence. We know from history that big lies are repeated often enough that they are accepted for the truth.

Every time this year that it appears that the legislature has gotten close to a deal on health care or water or actually made progress on some pressing issue Californians care about, there is an eruption of bald faced statements that "They're just doing that because of term limits" from the nattering nabobs of negativism.

As we are getting close to the end of this year, I've asked a dozen or more observers of the Sacramento scene, what would have been different this year had a proposition to change term limits not been placed on the ballot. The folks I've talked to include many who are cynical about the political process--yet none of them have been able to come up with a good answer.

I submit to you that we would have had the same dynamic and the same results had term limits not been on the ballot. The Governor would have had the same insistence on a health plan that's never had a single legislator supporting it or willing to introduce it. He would have the same position on SB 840--the single payer bill the legislature passed in 2006 and would have vetoed it, as he did to AB 8, the health bill that passed this year. He would have the same position on water and we would be at loggerheads over what to do. We would have had the same budget stalemate. The same bills would have passed and the same bills would have floundered.

There's more...