Spending Actually $121 Bill Higher

John Seiler:

The wrangling over the $12 billion in taxes in Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed 2011-12 budget of $86 billion usually ignores something: All the federal tax money California gets. The Bee reports:

The federal government gave California’s state government $120.7 billion in the 2009-10 fiscal year to underwrite education, health services, welfare grants and dozens of other programs, a very detailed new report from the state auditor’s office reveals.

More than a sixth of the money – $23 billion – may have been a one-time injection of funds, however, because it came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, otherwise known as “stimulus.” Those funds eased the state’s budget crisis, especially in education finance, and their disappearance has exacerbated the current budget deficit.…

Overall, the federal payments to California involve more than 350 specific programs or “program clusters.”

There area 350 specific programs? That alone explains much of the state’s fiscal problems. The federal government first taxes us, filters our tax money through the vast Washington bureaucracy, then dribbles a fraction of the money back to us in 350 micro-managed “program clusters.”

And it’s just going to get worse as the Obamacare Sovietized medicine scheme is imposed.

Because Republicans took over the U.S. House of Representatives in January, they’re going to cut most of the Obama and Bush (lest’s not forget that Republican president) “stimulus” money of recent years. That money helped California avoid stiffer budget cuts in recent years — cuts that, if made then, would not need to be made now.

But in our calculations on the state budget, we never should forget all that largess coming from the federal treasury after the IRS grabbed it from taxpayers across the land.

March 31, 2011