Accounting for California's Suicide
What went wrong in California?
California managed to achieve all at once the nation's highest sales and income tax rates -- and yet also the largest annual state deficit. So far under Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's tenure, state spending grew 34.9 percent, well beyond inflation and population that increased only 21.5 percent. And yet the governor often prevented the state Legislature from spending even more it didn't have.
The budgets of Medi-Cal, the state-run health program for the poor, are out of control. Prison costs increased about 50 percent in less than a decade, and now claim almost 10 percent of state spending -- almost as much as higher education.
The state is in its third year of drought. Billions of dollars of agricultural production are threatened by water cut-offs. Yet California hasn't build a major dam or canal in years.
