Worried Liberal Blues

David Ignatious - the Charles Krauthammer of the moderate left establishment - is worried. He's starting to think that the US is following the same path as California - "Californiazing" is his phrase - in passing social legislation with little idea of how to pay for it. No, I am not kidding: The Californiazation of America

The U.S. economy survived the traumas of 2009, thanks to good policy and good luck. What worries me, looking ahead, is what might be called the "Californiazation" of America -- the growing tendency of our political system to make promises in social spending programs that it isn't prepared to pay for with tax increases.

A little late to the flinty-headed, fiscal rectitude set, aren't we Dave? Some of us have been screaming about out of control social spending, and its corrosive effects on morals and economics, for years if not decades. I guess if you did that pre-2010, you were a racist, teabaggin', cheapskate who lacked compassion. Now, you can be the dean of the Washington columnist corps, only it's too late; we're already in deep trouble.

Like any good liberal, Ignatious knows how to spread the blame, both in CA and in DC:

What's worrisome this year isn't economic decline but political dysfunction. And nowhere is that clearer than in California, where politicians -- despite some serious bipartisan efforts -- haven't been able to make the decisions that would put the state on a sound financial footing.

The political forces that generate deficits are just too strong: a Democratic Party in hock to public-employee unions and a Republican Party in love with tax cuts. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger labored mightily in 2009 to close a $60 billion budget deficit, hammering out a plan that included $32 billion in spending cuts and $12.5 billion in temporary tax increases.

But at year's end, Schwarzenegger was still looking at a combined $21 billion deficit for the current and coming fiscal years, and he was pleading for an $8 billion federal bailout. A Bay Area news site last week featured this telling headline: "Schwarzenegger's New Action Role: Beggar."

"The problem is that there are no easy solutions left," lamented Jean Ross, director of the California Budget Project, in a comment to Bloomberg News. Schwarzenegger is talking about a new round of budget cuts, but what he really wants is a federal rescue. I can't help thinking of California as the new AIG -- spending money extravagantly on the way up and then extending the tin cup to Washington when the bubble bursts.

Give me a break. The crisis in CA was not a crisis of government or "partisanship." It was a crisis of big government, something the local GOP had very little to do with promulgating. But, when the state hit a wall, suddenly everyone was running around Sacramento looking for the "third GOP vote" to raise taxes, rather than cut a single government job, reduce a single pension payment, or end a single social spending program. The GOP is not the party of Big Government, and we have absolutely no stake in preserving it. Yet, it's our fault if we don't bail it out?

Look, the sophisticated solution to our problems, as determined by big government types and their media cheerleaders, has been to increase debt and increase taxes. On top of that, we are continuing to see appropriations for insanely expensive programs of dubious merit. In CA, we are building a $75 billion high speed rail system that no one wants. In DC, we are taking over the health care system in a manner that no one wants. Yet, it's all going forward despite an acknowledged fiscal and financial crisis. Ignatious is welcome to decry this, but he has been supporting such results for years. His new pose of "worrying" is too little, too late.