While finalizing the upcoming fiscal year’s state budget back in May 2022, California governor Gavin Newsom boasted of an extraordinary projected surplus: $97 billion. The governor immediately collaborated with an enthusiastic state legislature to spend it all. Of course, new spending on new programs and benefits tends to become permanent.
This has happened repeatedly in California. Between fiscal year 2012–13 and fiscal year 2022–23 (the year with the projected $97 billion surplus), per capita general-fund spending doubled, from just over $3,000 per resident to just under $6,000. (All figures are in 2022 inflation-adjusted dollars.)
Where did the money go?
The state prison system, for example, increased spending by $3.4 billion (29 percent) over the last ten years. But during the same period, the state-prison population dropped, from 168,000 in 2009 to 96,000 in 2022. California’s state prison system in 2022 spent an estimated $159,000 per prisoner.
The spending binge wasn’t limited to prisons. The Department of Developmental Services, for example, more than doubled in that span (up 117 percent), while the Departments of Social Services (up 89 percent) and Health Care Services (87 percent) saw similarly large upticks.
The state’s education spending was particularly profligate in that ten-year span. Per enrolled student, state community-college spending went from $2,181 to $4,286, California State University spending went from $6,226 to $10,796, and UC System spending went from $13,253 to $18,305. In K&nda…
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Do you believe the significant increase in spending on education and services has improved the quality of life in California enough to justify the debt?
@9L8THKB1mo1MO
No. California is terrible at budgets
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@ISIDEWITH1mo1MO
How can you mismanage CAs massive economy? High taxes along with having the largest ports and businesses and yet the Gavin Newsom finds a way to tank it
And Newsom, Pelosi's nephew, will run for POTUS, based on his stellar record as CA Governor, just like his Auntie as a Senator. Oh, Nancy's father was Baltimore mayor so they come from mafia background. How did Nancy's son's partnership with Mr. Hunter Biden go for Burisma?
Didn’t they have a surplus recently? California is the failed liberal experiment but keep voting the same.
@OctopusLeahRepublican1mo1MO
Gavin Newsom is the man we need in the White House. We need an elite class and a poor class that’s the only way to save America
I know someone inside Sacramento. Expect a fiscal emergency to be declared in May. They don’t have the discretionary spending to even cut to cover this.
@LyingPl4tformVeteran1mo1MO
Wow. Impressive. Canada has pretty horrific Debt (and basically the same population as Cali)...but it's still several hundred billion less.
If you put communists in charge of the Sahara, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
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