By Charles C. W. Cooke
Tuesday, May 11, 2021
I’ve spent much of the last week arguing that the federal
government needs to stop: to stop undermining the
miracle that is the COVID-19 vaccine; to stop sending money to people who don’t need it and
preventing them from returning to work; to stop borrowing
trillions of dollars during an expansion and risking utterly
disastrous inflation.
Now we learn that California — which received $42.3
billion in the Democrats’ recent “relief” bill, as a “bailout” of its
supposedly damaged budget — has an enormous budget surplus, thanks mostly to
the stock market having boomed last year and driven up capital gains tax
revenues. From Politico:
California expects a staggering
$75.7 billion surplus despite a year of pandemic closures — an amount that
surpasses most states’ annual spending and prompted Gov. Gavin Newsom on Monday
to propose sending cash back to residents as he faces a recall election.
California’s coffers are bulging
thanks to the high-flying Silicon Valley, surging stock market and a large
share of professionals who were able to continue working remotely during
Covid-19. The state has a progressive income tax structure that leans heavily
on top earners, allowing the state to enjoy record revenues despite widespread
job losses in the travel and service industries that have kept California’s
unemployment rate among the nation’s highest.
I’ll say it again: Stop! California’s
government is now so flush with cash that it is considering spending more than
11 billion dollars sending every single Californian a $600
check.
Or, to put it another way: The Democratic Party has used
its control of the federal government to borrow billions and billions of
dollars so that the Democratic governor of California can try to bribe his way
out of a recall election by sending his voters cash. There are many words for
that sort of behavior, but “relief” is not among them.
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