New America in California: Policy Papers

A Citizens Constitutional Convention for California

Elizabeth Wu — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 08:15:00 -0400

“Every man, and every body of men on earth, possesses the right of self-government…I am not among those who fear the people.” --Thomas Jefferson

“This representative assembly should be in miniature an exact portrait of the people at large. It should think, feel, reason, and act like them.” -- John Adams

“The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” - Alexis de Tocqueville

Crucial Details of a California Constitutional Convention

Elizabeth Wu — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 09:53:00 -0400

With California's fiscal woes mounting, and the government in Sacramento seemingly frozen in place, a constitutional convention has been proposed as a way to fix the Golden State's deeply entrenched structural problems. But as more people have begun considering this option, several important questions have arisen about some of the details of the Convention, specifically: 1) how would the delegates to the Convention be chosen; 2) how would a Convention of delegates chosen by random selection function, and how would the delegates be educated;

Instant Runoff Voting for the City of San Jose:

Political Reform — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:14:00 -0400

Executive Summary

San Jose uses a two-round runoff system to elect its mayor and city council, with the first election in June and a runoff election in November if no candidate wins a majority of votes in June. Voter turnout in the June general election is about half that of the November election, with turnout disproportionately lower among traditionally disenfranchised communities. With most elections being decided in a low turnout June election, a small and unrepresentative segment of the community is having an oversized effect

Banking Development Districts

Asset Building — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:51:00 -0400

To promote local economic development, California policymakers should create Banking Development Districts, a proven way to connect lower-income unbanked Californians with the financial products and services they need to enter the financial mainstream and begin to build savings and assets. It is modeled after New York State's successful Banking Development District program.

For the full text of the issue brief, please see the PDF attached below.

California Employee Savings Program Bill Summary

Asset Building — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:55:00 -0400

The California Employee Savings Program creates a voluntary, universal, portable retirement account for California workers who do not have access to a workplace retirement savings plan. It would give six million California workers and their families an opportunity to have their own workplace retirement savings plans to supplement their basic Social Security benefits. The California Employee Savings Program would also give hundreds of thousands of California small businesses an easy, low-cost, voluntary way to offer a retirement savings plan to their

CA Workforce Mobility and Savings Initiative Bill Summary

Asset Building — Fri, 15 May 2009 05:24:00 -0400

The CA Workforce Mobility and Savings Initiative, reforms the asset limit in the California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids (CalWORKs) program, to encourage low-income families to build the savings they need to permanently exit welfare. The measure repeals the $2,000 asset limit in CalWORKs for current recipients and raises it for new applicants from $2,000 to $7,000 while also eliminating the $4,650 vehicle limit. By reforming the asset limit, this measure restores the stated goal of the CalWORKs program by assisting families in achieving

Asset Building in California

Asset Building — Wed, 06 May 2009 09:59:00 -0400

Overview

The current economic downturn, triggered in part by excessive household debt and deflating housing prices, underscores the central role asset ownership plays in the economic security of California families and the broader economy. Yet, half of all Americans currently have few or no assets, in part due to policies that encourage savings and wealth accumulation that benefit the upper half of earners. The purpose of New America's Asset Building Program, is to significantly broaden savings and assets ownership in America,

Remapping a Nation without States

adminn — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:10:00 -0500

California is a state of many distinct regions. To give citizens a voice on regional issues and to reinvigorate California's Legislature, the state's central institution of self-government, we propose Personalized Full Representation for the 21st Century (PFR21), a system of representation by means of regionally based legislative elections that will allow the state'scitizens to set the agenda for their regions and for the state as a whole.

College Savings

Asset Building — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 10:44:00 -0400

Although the State of California currently offers its residents a 529 college savings plan through the ScholarShare program, the investment vehicle lacks incentives that encourage low- and middle-income individuals to participate in the program. Other U.S. states offer a variety of attractive incentives, such as matching contributions and state tax deductions. Californians are ready to adopt a stronger and more incentive oriented 529 plan that will encourage families to build savings for their children's college education. Postsecondary

The Energy Security for American Families Initiative

adminn — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 08:11:00 -0400

2007-2008 California Legislative Summary

Asset Building — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 08:04:00 -0400

The purpose of New America's Asset Building Program is to significantly broaden savings and assets ownership in America, thereby providing all Americans both with the means to get ahead and with a direct stake in the overall success of our economy. While pursuing an ambitious policy agenda at the federal level, we recognize that it is at the state level, in our nation's ‘laboratories of democracy', where the most innovative policies are often enacted.

Lessons From California's Health Reform Efforts For the National Debate

Health Policy — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:10:00 -0500

In January 2007, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger unveiled a comprehensive health care plan that aimed to provide quality, affordable health insurance to all Californians. Based on individual responsibility, the plan focused on prevention and wellness and emphasized a shared responsibility approach to financing.

After almost a year of negotiations between Governor Schwarzenegger and Democratic legislative leaders, compromise legislation with a framework and goals similar to the governor’s original proposal passed the State Assembly with a large majority. This compromise legislation, however, was later rejected by the California Senate’s Health committee.

The effort to reform California’s health care system faced several obstacles unique to the state. Californians seeking reform had a very narrow margin of error within a complex set of legislative, political, and demographic challenges. Health reform proponents also encountered several systemic roadblocks regarding affordability and sustainability common to health care reform proposals generally.

Nonetheless, the bipartisan spirit displayed by Governor Schwarzenegger and Assembly Speaker Núñez showed that Republicans and Democrats can work together to solve our nation’s challenging health care crisis and proved that lawmakers can reach consensus without compromising core values. This bipartisan effort to cover all Californians united a broad coalition of advocates representing citizens, patients, workers, employers large and small, hospitals, insurers, and politicians.

While comprehensive health reform legislation was never signed into law, efforts to reform California’s health system produced a number of lessons for the national health care debate and other states seeking to institute reforms. Among the most important: leadership matters, broad coalitions can be built and maintained, and the issues of affordability for families and sustainability for taxpayers must be satisfactorily addressed.

For the full text of the policy paper, please see the PDF attached below.

The California Assets and Transaction Account

Asset Building — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 11:43:00 -0500

In support of state-wide efforts to bring more Californians into the financial mainstream, the State of California could deliver a pre-paid account through the state’s tax filing process. The Assets and Transaction Account, or ATA, would expedite tax filers’ access to their tax refunds and serve as a safe, affordable, and convenient financial tool for lower-income Californians to conduct routine financial transactions and build saving throughout the year.

The state tax filing process presents a unique opportunity to reach and deliver a valuable financial product to millions of under-banked Californians, while also saving the state government millions of dollars each year through the electronic delivery of tax refunds.

The full report is available below in PDF format.

Coverage Without Gaps

Health Policy — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 08:24:00 -0400

In America’s fragmented health care system, too many individuals and families lack continuous access to health insurance. Overwhelming evidence shows that lacking health insurance leads to decreased access to quality care and reduces health status. The widely shared social and economic losses from these problems compound the cost of thousands of lives lost every year due to lack of health insurance and consequently access to care. In this context, health reform that ensures every individual and family seamless health insurance is more a matter of stewardship than of charity.

The goal of California health reform should be seamless, universal coverage, achieved by sharing responsibility among government, businesses, and taxpayers. This goal is achievable if we develop a system that encourages people to enroll by removing barriers and making insurance affordable. While all individuals must participate, seamless coverage should focus on ensuring that no individual or family is allowed to fall through the cracks, not just enforcement. Financial risk should be fairly shared by government, business, and households.

This paper develops operational principles and techniques to help California (and any system, by extension) create a culture of coverage where having health insurance is the norm and lacking insurance is the rare exception.

Both the full paper and an executive summary are available below in PDF format.

What Your Car Can Teach You About Health Reform

Health Policy — Mon, 09 Jul 2007 08:03:00 -0400

Analysts largely agree that if you want everyone to have health insurance, you’re going to have to require it. “Individual mandates” to purchase health insurance would also help insurance markets work better than they do now, since insurers would then find it far easier to attract a balance of high and low risks if all had to buy something. Therefore they would need to do far less medical underwriting (risk evaluation) and targeted marketing, and that would lower the cost of insurance to us all. And of course, if all patients had good insurance, then hospitals and doctors would have to worry less about charging Peter to pay for uninsured Paul and thus be able to devote more time to high quality patient care.

But this all works only if the mandate actually works, that is, if the purchase requirement is indeed enforceable in the real world. Critics of such a requirement have often argued that such a requirement will prove relatively unsuccessful, just like the current requirement for motorists to purchase auto insurance.

Though California has seen high rates of uninsured motorists despite three decades of legislation mandating that drivers buy auto insurance, health care reformers can learn valuable lessons from new changes underway at the California Department of Motor Vehicles. The successful efforts at California DMV and in other states demonstrate that there are models for how an individual requirement to purchase health care can be successfully implemented.

For the full fact sheet, please see the attached PDF document below.

Growing Support for Shared and Personal Responsibility in Health Care

Health Policy — Sat, 30 Jun 2007 08:54:00 -0400

Fear is a powerful force. Families fear the disappearance of affordable health insurance, employers fear international competition while financing high and rising health care costs at home, and providers fear that they will not be able to deliver needed care for lack of funding. In short, just about everyone fears that our system will fall apart. Instead of taking action, many politicians remain fearful of tackling health care reform, since it crushed the Clintons and others before them.

But hope is an equally powerful force. And the hope is that there is growing bipartisan support for a health system based on shared responsibility -- with the individual, employers, and government all doing their fair share.

Shared responsibility with an individual requirement to purchase coverage is not a new idea. Leading academics and 16 Republican senators proposed an individual mandate approach to universal coverage during the Clinton era. But renewed interest has intensified since Ted Halstead and Michael Lind published their ideas about how it could be done in The Radical Center in 2001. Since then, an impressive array of thinkers and analysts has shared quite similar visions. We collect and publish their statements and provide references in this paper.

For the full paper, please see the attached PDF below.

Estimating the 'Hidden Tax' on Insured Californians Due to the Care Needed and Received by the Uninsured

adminn — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:33:00 -0400

The report released today by the Hoover Institution confirms that insured families across California pay a "hidden tax" to provide uncompensated health care to the uninsured. The existence of this "hidden tax" is no longer in dispute; what's under debate is its magnitude, which is hard to measure precisely because it is "hidden."

This memo describes the range of estimates that various experts have made, highlights some of the reasons for differing judgments, and then lets the reader draw his or her own conclusions about the reasonable range of hidden tax estimates.

For the complete Policy Memo from New America, please see the attached PDF file below. The Hoover report can be downloaded from that group's web site.

Instant Runoff Voting

adminn — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 01:01:00 -0500

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Americans want a more representative and responsive government capable of addressing the nation's challenges, yet our electoral system is founded on antiquated practices that inhibit voter choices and encourage a politics of polarization and paralysis. It's time to bring our electoral system into the 21st century by adopting instant runoff voting (IRV).

IRV elects winners with majority support in a single election by allowing voters to rank a first, second, and third choice on their ballots. If no candidate wins a majority, and a voter's first choice is eliminated, the vote goes to the voter's second-ranked candidate as his or her runoff choice. IRV encourages more electoral competition, solves the "spoiler" problem, enables voters to choose the candidate they really want, and encourages candidates to win by building coalitions rather than tearing down opponents.

The full text of this essay is available below in PDF format. To learn more about our other Big Ideas for a New America, please click here.

An Energy Efficiency Trading System

adminn — Thu, 01 Feb 2007 00:42:00 -0500

Click here for a brief video discussion of this idea.

Reducing the economic and environmental risks of excessive energy use must become one of America's most important national goals. The most promising way forward is to reduce energy demand by spurring a revolution in energy efficiency. Indeed, efficiency is America's largest and most cost-effective potential energy resource.

Phasing in tough new energy standards for America's biggest energy users and making energy efficiency tradable -- much the way we now trade oil and natural gas -- would quickly reduce total energy consumption while limiting carbon emissions. A market for standardized efficiency credits (white tags) will give utilities, builders, and vehicle manufacturers flexibility in meeting strict efficiency goals while stimulating new technologies, creating jobs, and improving the nation's overall productivity and competitiveness.

The full text of this essay is available below in PDF format. To learn more about our other Big Ideas for a New America, please click here.

A Premium Price

Health Policy — Mon, 18 Dec 2006 22:12:00 -0500

Health insurance is the primary method Californians use to access and pay for health care. However, millions of Californians have inadequate health insurance or lack coverage entirely. When care is needed, the first inclination for these families is to delay treatment that is too costly and then hope for the best. And when hope is not enough, these families are forced to seek treatment that they often cannot afford. When medical bills go unpaid, many health care providers shift the cost onto those who can pay -- the those with health insurance...

For the complete text of this issue brief, please see the attached PDF version below.