Having recently watched the PBS series about Saving the Bay, I realize how unique, valuable, and important the Bay is, and how close we came to losing it to developers and pollution. Our children and future generations deserve the beauty of what remains of the Bay, plus levee strenghening and wetland resoration. Without the Bay we would be completely different, and I laud this proposal and the attention it brings to the Bay.

I, too, support Speier's plan but passing any bill that increases government spending is hard to justify when we have such a huge deficit. The basic problem is that after 30 years of cutting waste, fraud and abuse, it's still with us and it still represents too small a part of the government's expenses to turn the deficit into a surplus. And, yes, it's still a worthy cause and we need to keep cutting waste, fraud and abuse; it's just not enough by itself.

We've already cut lots of muscle out of government spending--just for one example, at every level, government is spending too little on maintenance and repair of roads and has been for way too many years. And, California is spending too little on education, especially primary and secondary education. We need to spend more and we need to spend it better.