Obama sets agenda in SF speech

As part of President Obama’s high-tech trip to California, before donors in San Francisco he set an ambitious agenda for his remaining two years. It’s significant he did so in California because of its centrality to both his agenda and his continued political support.

The president also obviously wants to keep pointing out that, despite the beginning of the race to succeed him, he is not a lame duck. He said:

I’ve only got two years left, but two years is a long time … and two years is also the time in which we’re going to be setting the stage for the next presidential election and the next 10 years of American policy. I intend to run through the tape, and work really hard, and squeeze every last little bit of change and improvement into the lives of ordinary Americans and middle-class Americans that I can.

According to the Chronicle, he spoke before “about 60 donors at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser at the Russian Hill home of Sandy Robertson, a tech financier, and his wife, Jeanne.”

But the president’s ambitious agenda already is putting up a higher price tag for California. As the Chronicle itself also noted in an editorial on the president’s amnesty program:

The actions, which are being challenged in court, could delay deportation for millions of immigrants who have not attained legal status — hundreds of thousands of whom live in California.

Since current state law allows “deferred action” immigrants to apply for certain government services in health and human services, that would mean a new and potentially costly strain on those programs as well.

“The President’s recent executive action on immigration would have a highly uncertain fiscal impact on human services programs,” wrote the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office in a report about the state budget released on Thursday. The office also wrote similar language in a separate report on the state’s health care budget.

The programs for which these immigrants would be newly eligible include Medi-Cal, in-home health care services, and the Cash Assistance Program for Immigrants. CAPI is a state program that provides cash assistance to legal immigrants who are ineligible for Supplementary Security Income or disability assistance due to their immigration status.

The potential of adding hundreds of thousands of recipients to these programs is daunting, to say the least, and Gov. Jerry Brown hasn’t included any additional funding for this possibility in his current budget.