California wants $8.4 billion to clean up a mess it keeps making.
Good Shepherd Media Editorial | California Election 2026
Vote No on Prop 38.
Proposition 38 asks Californians to borrow $8.4 billion for immunology research and promises cures for cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. The state’s own Legislative Analyst puts the repayment at $500 million to $600 million a year for about 20 years — more than $12 billion once interest is counted. Half the money, $4.2 billion, is written so narrowly that only one institute in the state qualifies: a UCLA-affiliated center co-founded by billionaire Gary Michelson, the same man bankrolling the campaign to pass it.
That alone should end the conversation. But the premise is worse than the price tag.
1. Who Benefits, and Who Pays?
This is not a research grant. It is a 20-year loan against the General Fund — the same money that pays for roads, police, schools and everything else Sacramento already says it can’t afford. Every dollar of bond debt is paid with your tax dollars, plus interest.
The campaign says the research will pay for itself through royalties. California heard that promise in 2004 with the stem-cell bond. The royalties never came close to covering the debt. The state’s own fiscal estimate says costs could be offset “if the funded research generates revenue.” If. Taxpayers sign for the loan today; the payback is a hope.
2. Half the Money for One Institute
Prop 38 sets aside $4.2 billion for “a single University of California-affiliated nonprofit medical research institute” and then stacks the eligibility rules — founding date, affiliation, research focus, facilities — until only one door fits the key. CalMatters asked UCLA. UCLA confirmed that among all its affiliated nonprofits, only the California Institute for Immunology and Immunotherapy can qualify. Its co-founder is the measure’s chief financial backer.
A billionaire pays to put a measure on the ballot. The measure routes $4.2 billion of public borrowing to the institute he co-founded. Voters are asked to call that medical research.
California has world-class universities, teaching hospitals and scientists who compete for funding on merit every year. Prop 38 lets one of them skip the line for half the pot.
3. The State Is Causing the Disease It Wants Money to Study
California invented Proposition 65 — the warning that a product contains chemicals “known to the State of California to cause cancer.” The state knows. It prints it on the label, posts it at the gas station, hangs it in the parking garage. Then it lets those same chemicals into the food supply, lets processed food get loaded with sugar, additives and preservatives, and asks you to take on $8 billion in debt to research why everyone is sick.
Cancer, heart disease and Alzheimer’s are not mysteries waiting on one more lab grant. The culprits are known: ultra-processed food, added sugar in nearly everything on the shelf, and a food system engineered for shelf life and profit instead of health. The disease pipeline starts at the grocery store, not the gene sequencer.
4. The Garbage-Bag Test
Prop 38 is like asking the garbage man to cut a hole in the bag, spill it across the street, and then paying him to come back and clean it up one more time.
If Sacramento wanted fewer cases of cancer and heart disease, it already has the power to act — for free. Enforce the warnings it already requires. Pull the chemicals it already admits are dangerous. Stop subsidizing sugar in school lunches. None of that needs a bond. Instead, Prop 38 keeps the garbage flowing and sends the cleanup bill to your kids for the next two decades.
5. Health Is a Personal Responsibility, Not a Bond Measure
Government’s job is to make sure people have honest information — and then stay out of their lives. A free citizen who knows what’s in the food can choose not to buy it, not to feed it to his children, and not to support the companies that make it.
That is how you beat heart disease and cancer: at the checkout line, one household at a time. Not by handing Sacramento another $8 billion and a 20-year IOU.
6. Washington Cut This Funding for a Reason
The Yes on 38 campaign says it plainly in its own ballot argument: this measure exists to replace federal research dollars that were cut. That’s the pitch — the feds stopped paying, so California taxpayers should.
The federal government stopped writing those checks because it is trying to stop paying for waste. The answer to Washington tightening its belt is not for Sacramento to loosen ours. A funding gap is a reason to examine priorities, not permission to borrow billions.
7. You Can’t Afford It
Families in this state can’t afford a house, gas, groceries, utilities or insurance. Every new obligation the state takes on is paid out of the same pockets. Prop 38 adds half a billion dollars a year to the state’s bills, for 20 years, so one institute can have a guaranteed revenue stream.
Families have to live within their means. Sacramento should too.
8. A Drug Discount Doesn’t Pay the Debt
Supporters point to a requirement that any treatment developed with the money be sold in California at 20% below the national average price. A discount on a drug that doesn’t exist yet is worth exactly nothing. It doesn’t make a payment on the bond, and it doesn’t come due until something succeeds — years or decades from now, if ever. The bond payments start right away.
Supporters also point to audits and annual reports. An audit tells you the money was spent according to the rules. It doesn’t tell you whether a single patient was helped. And when the rules were written so one institute qualifies, following them proves nothing.
9. The Better Way
Voting No on Prop 38 does not end medical research in California. The state can still fund research through the normal budget, where lawmakers have to weigh it against every other priority and answer for the results. Competitive grants, open to every qualified researcher, judged on merit. Private and university partnerships. None of that requires a billionaire’s ballot measure or a 20-year loan.
And none of it is a substitute for prevention. Fix the food. Enforce the warnings. Give people the truth and let them choose.
No on Prop 38: California Wants $8.4 Billion to Clean Up a Mess It Keeps Making
Good Shepherd Media’s Position: Vote No on Prop 38
Prop 38 borrows $8.4 billion, costs more than $12 billion to repay, hands half of it to one institute whose co-founder bankrolled the campaign, and asks taxpayers to cover a federal cut while the state keeps feeding the problem it claims to be curing.
Fix the food. Protect the information. Let people make their own choices. Keep the state out of the business of borrowing against our children for the pet projects of the rich.
Vote No on Prop 38.
Good Shepherd Media Editorial — California Election 2026
Sources
- California Secretary of State — Official Voter Information Guide, Proposition 38 (ballot summary, fiscal estimate, arguments for and against)
- Legislative Analyst’s Office — Proposition 38 Analysis
- Proposition 38 — Arguments and Rebuttals (Yes on 38’s federal-funding-cuts argument)
- CalMatters — “Is this proposition a $4 billion giveaway to a billionaire-backed LA research center?”