The Great Liberal Experiment
Is over. California is broke. Like, really broke. Like one year, $24 billion deficit broke:
To balance the books, Schwarzenegger is eyeing the dismantling of the state’s CalWorks program, which serves more than 500,000 poor families with children, as well as the elimination of Healthy Families, which provides medical coverage to 928,000 children and teens. Mothballing the two programs would save the state about $1.4 billion in the coming fiscal year, officials said.
If the proposals to slash the safety net come to pass, they would completely reshape the state’s social service network, transforming California from one of the country’s most generous states to one of the most tightfisted in aiding the poor.
Also potentially on the chopping block is CalGrants, a financial assistance program that offers cash grants to lower- and middle-income college students each year. The governor’s proposal would eliminate the 77,000 new grants awarded each year at a cost of $180 million, but that saving would eventually grow to more than $900 million as students graduated and the program was phased out.
It’s sad that not everybody’s dreams can come true through state assistance, but it points to the major flaw in liberal thinking: it is unaffordable and unsustainable. Hopefully Obama will take this into consideration.
May 24th, 2009 at 11:39 pm
Unlike the private sector, which never runs into these types of unexpected and major crashes.
May 26th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Unexpected? Only moron would think the liberal experiment would work this time when it has failed in every other instance it has been implemented.
I guess you are going to be surprised when Venezuela fails.
May 26th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Liberal experiment? I thought the governor of California was a Republican. As was the President for the last 8 years. Unless you’re implying that Obama’s policies since January caused California to go bankrupt.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
LOL,
WJB thinks the republican have been in control of California for the last twenty years.
May 26th, 2009 at 12:29 pm
@darwin
When the private sector goes bankrupt, it can’t force you to pay for it’s poor budgeting. A state can.
Did you know California gets a lot of money from the federal government to pay for their entitlement programs? That means you and me are paying for Californian health care.
Further, when a state loses money, it raises taxes or borrows against future taxes. Private industry just goes out of business, making way for profitable companies to take their place.