California: Hey, why not bail us out, too? Update: California responds

posted at 1:30 pm on November 13, 2008 by Ed Morrissey
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California has a whopping $28 billion dollar deficit, thanks to their inability to control spending.  When Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger first took office on a platform of fiscal responsibility, the Golden State deficit was around $16.5 billion.  California has continued its spending spree and raised taxes that kill investment and businesses.  Now that they face a drastic shortfall in projected revenue, thanks to the economic mismanagement of California’s governing class, the Speaker of the Assembly has a great idea — why not let the federal government subsidize their irresponsibility?

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, has drawn up a partial solution anyway: Federal money.

Use some of those Wall Street taxpayer $700 billion bailout bucks on California!

Bass has urged the federal government to hand over the money to states — well, her state anyway — as well as those rich Wall Street banks in another coastal state. Why should New York get it all?

With federal money it won’t really cost anything, see? And she won’t have to explain voting for more taxes back home come next election. It’s the least Americans can do for the sunshiney state they love to hate.

This is the latest suggestion in turning what should have been a limited program for the federal government to fix what it broke — mortgage-backed securities — into a free-for-all to subsidize failure.  After all, Bass can argue, if we’re going to bail out automakers in the private sector, why not bail out the public sector as well?  Who gives a damn about sovereignty when the voters may be around the corner with tar and feathers?

None of them should get a bailout, especially California.  Both the American auto industry and California share one common trait: exceptionally poor management.  The shareholders of the automakers should have acted to oust management and challenged the bloated labor contracts that have bankrupted American manufacturers.  California voters should have voted out the Democrats in 2006 and 2008 after they proved incapable of cutting spending.

The problem in California isn’t a revenue shortfall, it’s a wildly irresponsible spending spree.  The Governator is no exception.  While Arnold talked about fiscal responsibility and state deficits, he proposed boondoggles like the $3 billion for stem-cell research in 2005.  Instead of making tough choices, they simply kept spending and waited for someone to bail them out.

This former Californian says: Sorry, Karen, and the rest of the drunken sailors in Sacramento.  I’m not going to pay for the mistakes California made.  The Golden State made its own bed, and now it has to lie in it.  No one else wants to subsidize irresponsibility and mismanagement.  The party was over a long time ago, and now California has to find a way to pay its own tab.

Update: The deficit numbers are off, according to the governor’s office, who contacted me a short while ago.  The initial deficit was $16.5 billion for a single year, while the $28 billion is an estimate for two years. They also say the main problem is the credit crisis, and the deficit projection from the California Treasurer’s office was only $3 billion prior to October.  The press office says that a disproportionate portion of the revenue stream comes from capital-gains taxes, so when everyone took a bath, so did California.  They have a special session of the legislature at the moment, in part to restructure the tax stream.

They also want to point out that the budgets have been flat — no increase — for the past three years at $103 billion.

The governor’s press office didn’t note this, but I also corrected the last paragraph to remove the insinuation that Schwarzenegger supported Bass’ call for a federal bailout.

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