Obama Trying To Duplicate Failure Of Democratic Dominated California

Facing up to  $335,000,000,000 in debt, California is just “living the dream” – the Democratic dream.  (California’s Debt)  California is controlled by Democrats at every level of government with a Democratic Governor, Democratic State Senate, Democratic State Legislatures and a judiciary dominated by liberals California has been the perfect laboratory for the great “Democratic” experiment.  What has this “great experiment” created?  Spending out of control, taxation higher than any other state in the union, a decaying educational system, companies fleeing the state on a daily basis to avoid a ridiculous spaghetti of burdensome regulations and with public unions negotiating pension deals that will quickly bankrupt most of California’s cities and counties.

“Directors of the State Budget Crisis Task Force said their researchers had found a lot of other debts that did not turn up in California’s official tally. Much of it involved irrevocable promises to provide pensions to public workers, health care for retirees, the cost of delayed highway maintenance and an estimated $40 billion bill to bring drinking water up to federal standards.

They also pointed out many of the same unpaid bills from previous years that the governor had brought to light, like $8 billion in delayed payments to schools and community colleges, and $250 million that was raided from a fund dedicated to transportation and treated as revenue.

The task force estimated that the burden of debt totaled at least $167 billion and as much as $335 billion. Its members warned that the off-the-books debts tended to grow over time, so that even if Mr. Brown should succeed in pushing through his tax increase, gaining an additional $50 billion over the next seven years, the wall of debt would still be there, casting its shadow over the state.

“With inadequate information, our legislators and citizens are flying blind,” said David Crane, a board member who issued the task force’s special report on California’s fiscal condition at a news conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Mr. Crane, a former adviser to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, was joined by the economist George P. Shultz, who served various administrations as secretary of treasury, labor and state.

A spokesman for Governor Brown did not dispute the report but said the governor was making progress in his effort to restore fiscal balance.”  (California Budget Crisis)

 

Increasing taxes, increasing regulations, making things tougher on business and businessmen and desperately trying to avoid any real effort to curtail spending, President Obama has selected this model for disaster as the template for our national economy.  With similar economic failures in Greece, Spain and France you would think that our leaders would be able to see the correlation between increased taxes. uncontrolled spending and financial ruin, but evidently Obama needs to have us all learn this oft-repeated lesson the hard way.

Evidently emboldened by the victory of President Obama, Democrats seem more intent on positioning themselves to blame Republicans than they on actually addressing our out of control spending that has put us more than five trillion dollars in debt over the past five years.  As late as yesterday President Obama suggested that he would like to see agreement on tax increases now and “we can address the spending side next year.”  Yeah, if Republicans cave on the tax hike it is real likely that spending will be addressed when all of their leverage is gone.  I feel sorry for my kids – I do not feel like I am going to leave them with a better country than my parents left to me.