California Is Teaching America How To Destroy Itself

Federalism is the laboratory where states experiment with different paths, and then the rest of the country can see how it works out. California is currently the laboratory for setting yourself and everything around you on fire and then falling off a cliff into a field of broken glass and rusty nails while you’re still burning.

But put aside that we’re just talking about California for a moment, and consider this a wider lesson in the outcomes that follow Democratic supermajority rule over anything. Two things are happening at the same time in the state, and the violence of the collision between competing realities is extraordinary.

It’s simultaneously campaign season for the 2026 elections and budgeting season for state and local governments. Just watch how those two things play out in tension with each other, because it’s a real lesson in the meaning of political promises.

In campaign season, candidates for public office are promoting a massive expansion of government. A gubernatorial debate last week was a contest to see who could pander the hardest, and it was pretty close to being a tie between the whole field — prevented only by the presence of a single Republican, Steve Hilton, who got booed a lot.

Promising free money, former California attorney general and Joe Biden cabinet official Xavier Becerra crossed the line into the most explicit offer of machine-style racial patronage, like Tammany without the Irish: “If we gave people access to capital so they could put down the down payment, we would have far more people housed. And so in the black and brown community, we’re going to make down payments available so you can become homeowners as well and create wealth.”

You get free government money to buy a house, but only if you have the right skin color. It’s very progressive, like George Wallace standing on his head.

The stream of ideas was all this thoughtful. Billionaire candidate Tom Steyer promised to bring in an extra $15 to $20 billion of tax revenue per year, allowing for a massive expansion of government child care, health care, and education giveaways. Tony Thurmond, the state’s appalling superintendent of public education, promised “tax credits” — he means free money — so that all working-class people in the state have hundreds of dollars in extra spending money every month.

In short: more. More government, more entitlement programs, more free money. In two hours, six Democrats spent tens of billions of dollars with their mouths.

The flood of free money, Democrats promised, would fix the state’s extraordinarily dire affordability crisis. If you ever took an economics class, take a moment to think about that premise. More consumer spending — rising demand — lowers prices? More cash being pumped into an economy makes everything cheaper? Answer carefully, or you’ll turn into a Democrat.

More importantly, the exuberant promises on the debate stage arrive at precisely the moment everyone is making budgets for a new fiscal year that begins on July 1. And the only consistent reality in California government right now is less. Budget cuts are coming, after years of already-shriveling government services, and everyone knows it.

On the very same day California’s gubernatorial candidates were promising an orgy of new government spending, a headline in Los Angeles broke this news: “LA County’s next budget starts with $200 million deficit and hiring freeze.” Other headlines that same day reported sharp reductions in government funding for the county’s giant homeless population. Elsewhere, cities are closing and re-opening fire stations as their available revenue fluctuates. Your neighborhood has a fire station on Monday, but ask again on Tuesday afternoon.

While local governments spiral down, the state government isn’t doing any better. As I’ve noted, California’s legislative analyst reacted to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget proposal with undisguised alarm, warning that “the state’s negative fiscal situation is now chronic.”

Remember the promises from California’s gubernatorial candidates as you read the bottom line on the state’s proposed budget from the analyst: “Finally, deficits have persisted even as the state’s economy and revenues have grown, underscoring that the problem is structural rather than cyclical. Taken together, these trends raise serious concerns about the state’s fiscal sustainability.”

So people running for elected office to govern the state promise more, more, and more, endlessly, in an eternal and unbroken flood of new spending, while people holding elected office and governing the state grimly slash budgets. The bizarre trend is toward more spending and less spending. More free money giveaways, fewer cops and firefighters.

California has engineered a brand of party politics that has an inverse relationship to reality. At the national level, President Newsom would be the angel of death. Uniparty congressional Republicans can hardly claim success at fiscally responsible stewardship, but Left Coast progressives make them look like your grandma who grew up during the Great Depression and learned to save bacon grease in a jar for the next meal.

As one shrewd observer recently put it, “The state is no longer a steward. It is a harvester. It no longer incentivizes creation. It demands contribution from what has already been built.” The building has stopped, and the taking has begun in earnest.

Remember Becerra’s applause line about free government money: “And so in the black and brown community, we’re going to make down payments available so you can become homeowners as well and create wealth.” Then vote against that madness like your life depends on it.

Chris Bray is a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army, and has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at “Tell Me How This Ends,” here.