Let's say that you and yours spent $225,000 last year but that your combined incomes brought in only about $150,000. This is when you'd sit down at the fabled kitchen table and hash out how you're going to bring next year's spending in line before your pals Visa and Mastercard walk in and take everything away.
That's when your uncle shows up — let's say his name is California — to share his new idea with you.
"Hear me out on this one. I know you fell short by $73,000 last year but let's think outside the box. Instead of cutting spending, just do even more. Like double. More than double, really. With my help, you can boost the $225,000 all the way up to a cool six-hundred large. Maybe a little more."
"Because, get this," he says, really rolling now, "spending more than twice as much money next year is going to save you money."
No, California is not your rich uncle. His parents did very well but he quickly squandered their fortune.
In today's news, California's worst political instincts — particularly when it comes to little things like taxes, spending, and liberty — are represented by state Assemblyman Ash Kalra (D-San Jose).
According to a Fox News report by Sally Pipes, Sacramento has a $225 billion budget this year, including a record-busting $73 billion deficit that they're constitutionally mandated to fill. I suspect the solution will involve a lot of increased taxes, a few spending cuts, and oodles of smoke and mirrors.
Kalra's bill — AB 2200, the California Guaranteed Health Care for All Act — would "ban private health insurance and force all Californians into a single, publicly run health plan – at a cost estimated at $391 billion a year."
Actually, $391 billion was the estimate when he introduced it the last time in 2021. By now, the projection must be well above $400 billion. And that's just the projection. We all know that in reality, the spending on any entitlement always turns out to be more. Much more. If passed into law, AB 2200 would make California's entire state budget almost exactly the same as what the federal government spends on Medicaid.
The sales pitch is always the same for single-payer: "We'll cover everybody with generous benefits and it will cost less than it did before."
It's so obviously impossible that honestly, some days I can't believe Sacramento hasn't gone and imposed it already.
The good news for overtaxed Californians is that Kalra's bill is likely to go nowhere, at least not this session. But I've been watching California for almost 40 years — I lived there for six years before leaving for Colorado in 1994. And it's a safe bet that Sacramento is probably just another budget surplus or two away from embracing Kalra's bill or another one much like it. There's still plenty of the formerly Golden State's economy left to socialize, and the state's socialists are nothing if not ambitious. Ambitious and relentless.
On reflection, maybe there's a certain kind of evil genius at play in Kalra's single-payer plan.
California likes to boast about how "green" the state's energy is, but it just isn't so. Instead of producing more power (from whatever source) in California, the state relies more and more on buying power from neighboring states. In effect, California has figured out how to offshore its greenhouse gases.
What follows is pure fiction but it's a story that's been told many times in reality.
By forcing everyone in California into a state-run medical industry, maybe they'll do something similar to the long wait times for medical care. It will be weeks before you can see that specialist in San Jose your doctor just referred you to, but a brand-new private clinic — with zero wait times— recently opened up right off of I-80 in Reno, Nev., just a four-hour drive away.
If you suspect that one or more of the private clinic's investors happen to have the last name of Kalra, then you're finally learning how the game is played.
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