Some lyrics to the song “California Dreamin’ ” might describe the economic mood of California’s state government these days: “All the leaves are brown, and the sky is gray.”
Buckling beneath the weight of a $21 billion budget deficit, the “Golden State” is simply incapable of meeting its obligations. It has taxed and spent its way into financial catastrophe.
Alas, there is no end in sight. California has already burned through $8 billion in federal “stimulus” money that was supposed to last much longer, and its lawmakers have shown little interest in serious, long-term, budget-cutting reforms.
Worse still, California is now demanding an additional $8 billion bailout from the federal government. Lawmakers there say the entire country will suffer if California doesn’t get the extra cash to stabilize its budget. They even say it’s not a bailout they want from Uncle Sam but an “investment.”
An investment in what? A state whose tax-and-spend policies brought on economic disaster and whose legislators refuse to change their misguided way of doing business? That’s just a recipe for needing another so-called “investment” in the future.
What California is asking Congress to do is shuffle into its coffers still more tax dollars from states that taxed and spent more frugally over the years.
That would be unjust, and it would only put off for a little longer California’s desperate need to stop spending money it doesn’t have. Congress should reject outright any attempt to make taxpayers in Tennessee or Indiana or Arizona pay to bail out California.