When you are a popular politician, especially one that likes to do "big things" it is always more challenging and thrilling to be on the offense. But in order to be a winning team, you have to not only get excited about your offensive game, but your defensive game as well. The reality is that with this massive fiscal crisis facing California state government, Governor, it is time to bench your 
offensive team, and huddle with your defensive team and figure out how we are going to keep California in the game.
Clearly you have a prefered agenda of items that you would like to pursue, including increasing government’s role in health care, and implementing a lot of regulations to reign in man-made production of carbon dioxide. But the reality is that, with these two agenda items in particular, they are going to make California’s financial crisis worse, not better.
On healthcare, it is simply not credible to say that you are going to create a massive new government program with upwards of 14 billion dollars of new spending, with new regulations on Californians, and on California business, and that this isn’t going to damage our state’s economy and be a drain on already scarce resources. And of course the regulations that are already being mandated on Californians and on California business to comply with the goals set in AB32 are making matters worse, not better, for our state’s fiscal health.
Tom McClintock speaks to this very issue quite eloquently (and perhaps will added gravitas since he accurately predicted this financial crisis)…
I will close by quoting our friend Tom McClintock, who speaks to this very issue quite eloquently (and perhaps will added gravitas since he accurately predicted this financial crisis)…
The Assembly has a “check-in session” today [now the day before yesterday as Tom penned this on Thursday], the beginning of the legislative process that is expected to produce a socialized health care plan by the end of the month. The plan is expected to include a requirement that employers pay at least 6.5% of their payroll and smokers pay an extra $2 per pack of cigarettes to fund the $14 billion program. Democratic leaders are reported to be “close” to the governor’s position on the measure. A $14 billion tax increase would be the biggest in the state’s history, dwarfing the current record of $7 billion set in 1991. The 1991 tax hike broke the back of the economy, turned a recession into a near-depression and produced two consecutive years of billion dollar declines in state revenue. But the $14 billion price tag is really just a down-payment, because every state that has tried this type of program has suffered massive cost overruns that quickly ballooned far beyond the original price projections. (There’s a reason Mitt Romney has stopped bragging about the system he imposed in Massachusetts last year).
How is California supposed to sustain this hit to its economy and the enormous drain on state resources with the state’s finances already hemorrhaging red ink? It’s no problem – just think happy thoughts.
Remember the “biggest budget reserve in state history” that the governor was bragging about a few months ago? It’s already gone, and the state just issued the second biggest “revenue anticipation note” in its history (the state’s equivalent of a pay-day loan) to cover its first quarter deficit – which is itself the biggest in the state’s history.
How big? Here’s a chart of the last nine first-quarter budget deficits reported by the state controller’s office:
What better time to add another $14 billion-plus to the state’s obligations?
Governor, it’s time to huddle the California defense, and start to ask one question — what can we do to reduce state government spending, which has ballooned in recent years.