Written by Nicholas Vetrisek
California is a financial wreck. Despite record high revenues, California has a massively increasing debt burden that is only slated to get worse. With massively underfunded pensions and numerous other debts, California still finds new projects to waste money on while failing to address the most important issues facing the state.
Although California has the highest taxes and revenue in the nation, rather than show fiscal responsibility and pay down its obligations, the government instead chooses to somehow go further into debt while spending any additional funds on junk proposals that nobody asked for. No example of this is more clear than Senate Bill 45.
Billed as a “climate change” bond, when looked at through a critical lens you will find that the bond actually has very little if any connection to climate change. In fact, just $1.6 billion of the $4.2 billion requested is going towards wildfire and drought prevention, where connections to climate change are tenuous at best, while $1.2 billion is going towards safe water initiatives, something that really has nothing whatsoever to do with climate change.
There is nothing inherently wrong with the above-mentioned policies, but these goals can already be accomplished with the money the state has and it’s unnecessary to go into debt or tax Californians further. Furthermore, it violates the rules of what a bond is supposed to be for in the first place. According to the California Constitution’s requirement for bonds, they can be issued only for “one issue or work.” The “one issue” clearly isn’t climate change as shown above and clean water and wildfire prevention are two completely different issues—therefore the bond should be automatically invalidated.
Unfortunately, knowing California Democrats, this bill could potentially pass. It already passed the State Senate last week, and the Assembly is likely to take it up in the near future. Given that California is experiencing record high economic output, the effect of this bill will be negligent or nonexistent in the current market. It’s only when the economy eventually crashes that the result of this horrible economic mismanagement will be felt by all. The California economy will be in shambles and for the Sacramento politicians, it will be too late.
In the words of Jeff Lynne, “It’s a cryin’ shame, but you ain’t got nobody else to blame.”
