Making the case for not bailing out California.

If many of the nation’s governors have their way, the next agenda item for the spendthrift federal government could be a bailout of state budgets. According to a report issued on December 10 by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 37 states face mid-year 2009 budget deficits, totaling $31.7 billion. As would be expected from its size, California leads the pack at $8.4 billion. However, California’s shortage is well above its share, at more than one-quarter of the total which is double its share of the population.

Yet it gets worse. Later, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger announced that the budget deficit had risen to $14.8 billion, which would take its share of the deficits to more than three times its share of the population. All of this is after a long and drawn out legislative process that was to have closed a previous $22 billion deficit earlier in the year. ...

California has been pitifully served by its state government. After missing the June 30 statutory deadline for balancing the 2009 budget, the legislature and governor spent the better part of the next three months doing everything they could to finish the job. In the final analysis they pretended to balance the budget with math that virtually no-one believed. That’s probably why there has been so little outrage at the new $15 billion deficit that has developed so quickly.

But the buck doesn’t stop with lawmakers. After all, California’s electorate has repeatedly sent the elected representatives to Sacramento that have produced this mess. In California the voters themselves seem oblivious to the financial status of the state.

This is likely to get worse before getting better. In the past voters could be counted on to vote down expensive new projects in hard times. But not anymore. In November they approved more than $30 billion in additional bonded indebtedness when they should have been asking for either a draconian spending cut or the tax increases. Californians will not be stopped from living beyond their means.