The media likes to pretend that the main reason Joe Biden is unpopular is because of his age instead of his corruption, incompetence, and extreme policies—and the Democrat politician often floated as a replacement if Biden somehow becomes indisposed to perform his duties, is California governor, Gavin Newsom.

The following article from AP by Adam Beam recognizes the huge budget problem in California, but somehow doesn’t recognize that the bulk of the problem is unrestrained spending.

California faces record $68 billion budget deficit, nonpartisan legislative analyst says

The nation’s most populous state — with an economy that is the fifth largest in the world — has been struggling since last year because of the rising prices of most goods and services and how the U.S. government has been trying to control it.

It is now much more expensive for people and businesses to borrow money, meaning fewer people are buying homes and fewer businesses are hiring workers. That is leading to fewer tax collections for the state.

A series of damaging storms last winter have made the problem worse. The storms were so bad that state officials decided to give people and businesses more time to pay their taxes this year. Californians did not have to pay their 2022 taxes until November of this year. That meant Newsom and the Legislature had to come up with a budget over the summer without knowing how much money the state had to spend.

It turns out that they badly misjudged how much taxes people and businesses would pay. The nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Office said tax collections were off by $26 billion, a major driver of the deficit. When combined with the economic slowdown California has been facing since last year, it leads to a predicted deficit of $68 billion, Legislative Analyst Gabriel Petek announced Thursday.

First, Beam blames high inflation—which we have been told is not a problem anymore.

Then he shifts to high interest rates, which the Federal Reserve raised to combat the high inflation.

Next, it’s the fault of “climate change,” or record snow and rain—which actually saved the state huge amounts of money because the reservoirs are now full, and they didn’t have to put strict restrictions on use. The storms, which occurred cyclically and naturally also substantially reduced fires, which again, saved the state and the people lots of money.

Of course we didn’t hear much about the mild foreseason because it doesn’t match the green pushers’ agenda to scare everyone into capitulating to climate lockdowns and punitive taxation; from Reuters:

California is on the verge of recording a second straight year of relatively mild wildfire damage, after historic rains put the state on track to avoid the calamities of recent fire seasons.

Then Beam blames a shortage of revenue, which he says was caused by a significant slowdown in California, the U.S State with the biggest economy… all while his media cohorts and other Democrats claim how great the economy is.

California has a very progressive income tax policy, so it relies on the rich to pay a majority of their income tax. The state also relies heavily on capital gains taxes.

Democrats claim they want income and wealth equality, but for California Democrats to finance their massive spending budget, they need the stock and real estate taxes to soar, which compounds inequality instead of reducing it. If asset prices soar, it makes it even more unaffordable for the poor and middle classes and small businesses to survive, but the rich do very well, and can afford to weather the storm. That is why so many are moving out of California. They simply cannot afford to live there. As NerdWallet reports, California has the highest individual state income tax rate, which goes as high as 12.3%.

It hits 9.3% when taxable income hits $68,351.

It also has the highest potential corporate tax rate at 10.84%.

You would think that California, with its high income tax rates, would not also have the highest gas and sales tax rates in the country—policies which greatly harm the poor and middle classes—but it does. From the Tax Foundation:

California pumps out the highest state gas tax rate of 77.9 cents per gallon (cpg), followed by Illinois (66.5 cpg) and Pennsylvania (62.2 cpg). The lowest state gas tax rates can be found in Alaska at 9.0 cents per gallon, followed by Missouri (17.5 cpg) and Mississippi (18.4 cpg).

California also has the highest state sales tax rate at 7.25%.

But Beam’s article doesn’t recognize the elephant in the room as the main culprit for the deficit. The state just spends so darn much. The expense budget is up an additional $78 billion (over 30%) in one year, and over 120% in four years, but that spending has not solved the myriad of problems in California. In fact, the issues have only worsened.

We were told that we needed a lot of emergency spending for COVID, but politicians never seem to go back to more reasonable spending levels. There is always another emergency.

From the Urban Institute:

According to NASBO, California’s recent expenditure totals (general fund spending/total spending, including federal transfers were:

• FY 2022: $242.9 billion/$510.0 billion

• FY 2021: $162.1 billion/$498.9 billion

• FY 2020: $146.3 billion/$357.1 billion

• FY 2019: $140.4 billion/$300.4 billion

So why would Americans take the governor in California, who is running the economy into the ditch, and elect him to be president? Of course, the media and other Democrats haven’t cared about facts or results for a long time, so they will intentionally mislead the public that Newsom would be a great choice.

We would just replace an old snake oil salesman, with a younger one with greasier hair.

Image generated by AI.