Harris' Candidacy Puts a Spotlight on California's Failed Policies
From overspending to the state's overly powerful unions, California keeps sticking to the taxpayer.
After Vice President Kamala Harris secured the Democratic nomination for president, many news outlets featured news stories with headlines such as this one: "Harris Put California at Center of Politics." Or "Bay Area Relishing in National Spotlight." There's little doubt that Harris' ascent—and Gov. Gavin Newsom's long-running effort to tout California's so-called "freedoms" in benighted Red States—has elevated California's national profile.
Harris was, of course, San Francisco prosecutor, state attorney general, and U.S. senator. She only had a marginal—if any—effect on the state's yearslong descent into progressive fantasyland, even if she is a product of the Bay Area Democratic machine. My focus isn't on the vice president, but on the state's one-party politics. Here are a few pillars of modern California's politics:
Tax, spend, borrow, and spend some more: A few years ago, I recall one Democratic senator waxing poetic about the good old days, when the U.S. government imposed income-tax rates (from 1944 to 1963) that topped 90 percent. It reminded me that the overarching goal of our state government—from the governor to Democratic supermajorities in both legislative houses—is to increase taxes by the maximum amount possible without causing another taxpayers' revolt.
Two years ago, California enjoyed an unprecedented $97.5-billion budget surplus—an overage that was higher than the total state budget of all but a handful of other states—and proceeded to spend every last dime of it instead of, say, using the extra cash to rebuild the state's infrastructure or fix its debt problems. Even though the windfall was largely driven by federal COVID spending, lawmakers assumed new revenue levels were permanent and then seemed shocked by a subsequent $47.5-billion deficit.
At that point, they embraced a bunch of accounting gimmicks that technically closed the budget gap, but left the overspending problem to fester. After each new round of spending, state officials immediately lose interest in monitoring the results of such spending—and do their darnedest to downplay egregious incidents of misspending.
Put social engineering over civil engineering: In relatively normal states, lawmakers set about the business of building and maintaining the roads, freeways, bridges, water systems, and electrical grids that keep society functioning. A previous generation of Californians, including Democratic Gov. Pat Brown, did invest heavily in building infrastructure.
Starting with Brown's son, Jerry Brown, California Democrats have been dismantling that legacy. Instead of building road infrastructure, the state's leaders have boasted that the era of freeway construction is over. They are intent on forcing us out of our cars and into the state's crummy transit systems. They're trying to bulldoze dams, drive the gas industry out of state and, well, don't seem that concerned about rising prices and traffic congestion, water rationing, and occasional electrical blackouts.
They've neglected to maintain our existing water infrastructure to the extent that the spillways at Oroville Dam almost collapsed in 2017. Our electricity grid often is on the precipice, with state officials routinely warning people not to overburden it by plugging in their subsidized electric cars. In California, the state is all about re-engineering our behavior rather than investing in the civil engineering projects that bolster our lifestyles. Then they wonder why our population is falling.
Always put unions over the public: California's lawmakers recognize their real constituents are not the state's voters, but powerful unions that fund their campaigns. Therefore, when the state was mandating stay-at-home orders that threatened ordinary Californians' ability to earn a living during COVID-19, lawmakers also were doubling down on the enforcement of Assembly Bill 5. That's the legislation that banned independent contracting. Newsom and lawmakers were more than happy to try to shut down the ride-sharing industry and other freelancing if it placated the demands of unions.
This devotion to unions also explains why the Legislature is now trying to largely stop grocery stores from using self-check-out lanes. Democratic leaders say it's about fighting retail theft, but everyone knows the bill is about protecting union grocery jobs. Newsom last year boosted fast-food minimum wages to $20 an hour. Many restaurants are shuttering locations. Meanwhile, lawmakers won't deal with the state's growing pension debt, as six-figure union pensions consume local budgets.
Tout 'democracy' while undermining it: Newsom has been touring Red States and running ads around the country boasting about California's commitment to freedom and democracy, but at home he convinced the state Supreme Court to keep a tax-limiting initiative, the Taxpayer Protection Act, off of the ballot. The governor also tried—but failed—to undermine a ballot measure that would toughen up sentencing in the face of a retail theft wave. The state likes to preach about democracy, but we wouldn't want outsiders looking too closely.
There are other common and counterproductive California approaches, of course. But let's just say that our state is hardly an exemplar of good governance and its political weirdness is best left on the periphery.
This column was first published in The Orange County Register.
