Neighborhood Coffee With Sen. Harman

So we had our little neighborhood coffee last night with Sen. Harman and some of his staffers. I think we ended up having about ten of my neighbors show up. I was pleasantly surprised. You'll never guess in a million years what the number one thing my neighbors were pissed off about....illegal immigration ding ding ding. The base has completely deserted the President on this issue. The Senator talked about how the problem was affecting the state. He said illegal immigration is estimated to cost the state over $10 billion/year between costs of education, welfare, and incarceration of illegal alien criminals. If we were reimbursed for these costs by the federal government, we could pratically eliminate the structural state deficit. That doesn't appear likely though.

He also talked about the different health care proposals floating out there. There's everything from market based proposals to Canadian style single payer government run disasters being thrown around.

Lastly he spoke about the upcoming budget talks. All Assembly and Senate republicans have pledged not to support higher taxes. It will be very interesting to see what comes out of this. My guess is that it's going to be one long hot summer in the state capitol.