XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.republicans, talk.politics.guns
Who the flip would voluntary live in COMMIEfornia?
It's a shithole.
"California’s fourth-ranked economy is also tops in unemployment,
poverty and deficits"
<
https://calmatters.org/commentary/2025/05/california-fourth-ranked-economy-budget/>
'California’s economic output has surpassed $4 trillion a year and in
doing so slipped past Japan to become, were it a nation, the globe’s
fourth largest economy, surpassed only by the United States, China and
Germany.
The news was an opportunity for Gov. Gavin Newsom to exercise his
penchant for braggadocio.
“California isn’t just keeping pace with the world — we’re setting the pace,” Newsom declared. “Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability, and believe in the power of
innovation.”
It was also an opportunity for Newsom to take another shot at President
Donald Trump, saying, “while we celebrate this success, we recognize
that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the
current federal administration. California’s economy powers the nation,
and it must be protected.”
If California’s economy is booming, as Newsom boasts, one might wonder
why the state’s unemployment rate is the third highest in the nation,
with more than a million jobless workers, and why its poverty rate is
the nation’s highest.
One might also wonder why, if California’s economy is so healthy, the
state budget is experiencing chronic multi-billion-dollar deficits.
Newsom must tell the Legislature this month how he would alter the
2025-26 budget he proposed in January, touching off the annual whirlwind
of negotiations to produce a more-or-less final version for adoption by
June 15.
The January budget proposed at least $11 billion in short-term fixes,
including off-the-books borrowing, dips into the state’s budget reserves
and accounting gimmicks to close the gap between projected income and
the spending dictated by current law.
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Tax revenues are running a bit ahead of expectations so far this year,
but not nearly enough to close the deficit, which has widened due to
spending on Medi-Cal, California’s health care system for the poor
that’s far exceeding the level of the 2024-25 budget enacted last June.
Overall, Medi-Cal expenditures are over $6 billion higher than
expectations, with a major chunk caused by higher-than-expected
enrollment of undocumented immigrants.
Therefore the May revise, as it’s dubbed, is likely to contain even more expedient fixes that may postpone the day of fiscal reckoning until
Newsom’s governorship ends two years hence but will continue to plague
his successor and the Legislature.
The Medi-Cal situation exemplifies the underlying reason why
California’s budget is unhealthy while the state’s economy continues to grow, albeit without producing many new jobs.
The pertinent data is to be found in a recent publication by the Legislature’s budget analyst, Gabe Petek, called “CalFacts 2024.”
Read Next
California’s economy was already sluggish before Trump’s global tariffs Commentary
California’s economy was already sluggish before Trump’s global tariffs
by Dan Walters
It reveals that since Newsom became governor in 2019, state spending has increased, on average, by 9% a year while annual revenues have grown by
just 6%. The difference between those two numbers constitutes what
budget mavens call a “structural deficit,” meaning that spending baked
into law far exceeds what the current revenue system can generate.
The underlying discrepancy between income and outgo is important to
remember, because when Newsom unveils his revised budget he’s likely to
cite the Los Angeles wildfires and Trump’s tariffs as factors in the budget’s gap.
Both of those events are likely to increase the deficit, but they didn’t cause it. The deficit exists because Newsom and the Legislature have chronically spent more than the revenue system produces, even though Californians have one of the nation’s highest state and local tax
burdens, relative to the state’s economy.
Moreover, by tapping into reserves meant to cushion the impact of
recessions or other emergency situations, Newsom and legislators have
weakened the state’s ability to cope with genuine economic setbacks or disasters, such as the wildfires'
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