It’s rare that we have a snapshot of our national future but California has provided it. News this week included a $21 Billion deficit projection by California’s budget director. This is what the Democratic welfare state looks like and it is what America will look like under Obama and the Democrats.
Dennis Prager hails it a blessing! What? Yes, he argues that CA illustrates the outcome of tax and spend statist policies. It will be hard for the country not to see the left’s policies for what they are: Abandonment of individual responsibility for the welfare state. Naivete toward evil because of their morally relativistic fog. Obsession with redistribution of wealth as opposed to its creation. Thirst for power through statist expansion and welfare dependency. And the perverted desire to be liked rather than right. Recognition of all of this has caused a dramatic voter shift with the CA electorate rejecting tax increases and independents dramatically shifting toward the Republicans in a recent Pew poll.
If California is over taxing, over spending, and over regulating to impoverish its residents and drive out its businesses, New York is only a few steps behind. The projected deficit there is $16 Billion. As John Stossel says in a recent post, the spending level is worse than the taxes. That’s kinda like Bernadette Peters’ line in The Jerk, lamenting her new impoverishment, “it’s not the money…it’s the stuff!”
The sad thing is that neither state is taking serious action to restore fiscal health. Neither is the federal government with a projected deficit between $1.2 and $1.8 Trillion this year. Evidently Obama told Fox News that if we keep adding to the debt, people could lose confidence in the U.S. economy. Mark Steyn called this ” a great line from a guy who plans to “keep adding to the debt” as a conscious strategy!”
Our children, grandchildren and succeeding generations will pay for this immoral profligacy.
Tom Motherway