redstate.com By Jennifer Van LaarÂ
California Governor Gavin Newsom presented his proposed 2024-2025 budget Wednesday and started off by claiming that the state’s not actually facing a $68 billion shortfall, that according to his office the state faces a $37.9 billion shortfall, and tsk-tsk’ing journalists who cited the December number from the Legislative Analyst’s Office.
Yeah, that’s so much better.
During his presentation Newsom announced that he plans to use $10.4 billion from the state’s rainy-day fund and $2.7 billion from other reserves to partially close that gap, but in order to use the rainy-day fund Newsom has to declare a budget emergency. Now, the term “emergency” implies something unforeseen; California had large surpluses in 2021-22 and 2022-23, but Newsom and the Democrat supermajority didn’t choose to pay off debt with that surplus and now are in a big hole. And Newsom doesn’t want to nix his “signature” programs (a/k/a constituency payoffs), so he just wants to call it an emergency and do some other creative accounting.
BREAKING: Gov. Gavin Newsom to declare a budget emergency in California, which is required to withdrawal money from the state's rainy-day fund.
Bracing for a $37.9B Billion shortfall, he's proposing to use $10.4B from that account, along with another $2.7B from other reserves.
— Ashley Zavala (@ZavalaA) January 10, 2024
If you guessed that Gavin would understand that his irresponsibility does not make the results everyone else’s emergency, well, you don’t know Gavin well. Of course it’s a totally unforeseen emergency, because capital gains revenues fell and there were floods and snowstorms, or something.
California ophthalmologist Dr. Houman Hemmati had some thoughts for Newsom after hearing about the governor’s plan to declare a budget emergency. Hemmati is the son of Iranian immigrants who owned a family farm in Ventura County, California, so he’s keenly aware of the burdensome regulatory structure that affects all types of families and businesses in the state.
In a very long post on X, Hemmati gave Newsom very specific and effective advice on how to actually balance the budget instead of using some “voodoo economics.” He wrote:
Itâs utterly irresponsible of @CAgovernor @GavinNewsom – bordering on criminal – to declare a âbudget emergencyâ so that he could artificially balance the budget (and take credit for it) using our rainy-day fund. Gavin: YOU and your excess spending are the emergency…
READ FULL ARTICLE HERE... (redstate.com)
Home | Caravan to Midnight (zutalk.com)
Be First to Comment