California Gov. Gavin Newsom is always focused on how he can ascend upward. That was true back when he was an elitist playboy in the 1990s who dated socialite Kelley Phleger and the singer Jewel for the clout it provided him in high-society San Francisco. And it’s true now as he seeks to leverage his time as California’s governor into the role of America’s president.
Currently, the primary obstacle to Newsom’s ceaseless ambitions is an angry old man’s desire to cling to a job for which he lacks the mental capacity. Yet swiftly becoming equally obstructive to Newsom’s plans is the condition of California under his governance. In particular, the state’s $73 billion budget shortage threatens to slap a giant red mark on his leadership. The shortfall will serve as a warning: Gavin Newsom was given power over the nation’s wealthiest state, and he promptly wrecked that state’s finances.
The estimated $73 billion shortfall was disclosed Tuesday by the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. It represents an increase from that office’s earlier estimate of a $58 billion shortfall; the heightened projection resulted from California’s paltry income tax receipts in January.
This $73 billion is an astronomical shortfall. To put it in perspective, Virginia’s total budget for fiscal year 2024 is $80.8 billion. Furthermore, California’s budget agreement for the 2023–2024 fiscal year called for $225.9 billion in spending, making the shortfall ginormous in proportion to California’s budget. And it gets worse: California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office projects deficits of at least $30 billion a year for fiscal years 2025–2026 and 2027–2028.
The fault for California’s predicament lies entirely with Gavin Newsom. He has repeatedly spent exorbitantly on useless liberal goodies. For example, Newsom handed a $9 billion gift to public pensions; provided free health insurance to illegal immigrants; burned billions of dollars on the bullet train to nowhere; wasted $12 billion on the worst-ever plan to fight homelessness; shilled out $51.4 billion to “climate projects”; provided two years of free community college; and spent billions to increase the number of therapists in schools. Newsom did not care that the waste would create a ticking time bomb of fiscal disaster. The only thing that mattered to him was that the spending would temporarily make him a progressive champion.
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Newsom is refusing to back down from his strategy of spend, spend, spend. In January, Newsom claimed — contra the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office — that the state only faced a budget shortfall of $38 billion. This week, Newsom trotted out a staffer to affirm that the governor still holds that the shortfall is $38 billion. Worse, Newsom is not seeking any significant decreases in spending to make up the difference. Instead, he wants to engage in budgetary trickery to keep his spending projects and push off judgement day until his successor takes over. For example, Newsom wants to allow schools to keep $8 billion of cash disbursements without, as the Legislative Analyst’s Office explains, “recognizing the budgetary impact of those payments.” In addition, Newsom wants to take funds from the state’s reserves to cover the shortfall. The problem is that this fund is intended for economic crises, and the reason for California’s budget shortfall is mostly out-of-control spending. If California’s reserves were spent before a major economic downturn, it could be catastrophic for the state because California’s tax money disproportionally comes from the wealthy, whose incomes are more sensitive to recession.
In the event that Joe Biden pulls out of the presidential race prior to the convention because of his cognitive decline — which even big-name progressives are calling for — one of Newsom’s foremost competitors in winning the nomination from the party’s delegates would be Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Michigan currently has a $7.5 billion surplus, making Newsom’s inability to manage his state’s finances responsibly look even worse.
Of course, wrecking California’s finances is far from the only disaster Newsom has inflicted on his state. Newsom has overseen a huge increase in California’s homelessness population; a dramatic decline in California students’ learning outcomes; incredibly overbearing and insane COVID lockdowns and school closures; an increase in violence and property crime; an exodus from the state; an unconstitutional restriction of religious liberty for months on end; and $32 billion in fraud against the state’s taxpayers.
But the fact that the task for which Newsom is most directly responsible — setting California’s budget — has been so disastrous is especially alarming.
In a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library on Tuesday, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul admonished Americans to “never, ever let Gavin Newsom anywhere near the White House.” Newsom’s glaring failure to manage California’s finances should serve as a stark warning that Paul’s impulse is exactly right.