00:00Today, I'm going to tell you how much the California budget has grown since Gavin Newsom
00:05became governor. The Sacramento legislature passed a new budget that amounts to almost
00:11$352 billion. That is a staggering increase from last year, and it marks a 40% increase
00:17if you take inflation into account from when Newsom first took office in 2019.
00:23Back then, he still had some fiscally conservative impulses. For example, in his very first
00:28state of the state address, he said that he was canceling the high-speed rail project from
00:33San Francisco to LA, saying, quote, it would cost too much and respectfully would take too long,
00:39end quote. However, Newsom soon flip-flopped on that and decided he wanted to build out the Central
00:45Valley portion of the high-speed rail project and hopefully eventually connect California's two
00:50major cities. That has been a major financial drain, but it's not even the biggest expenditure in the
00:55budget. California spends the most on healthcare and education. On healthcare in particular,
01:00it spends billions and billions on Medi-Cal, which is the state's version of Medicaid, and the costs
01:07just keep growing. In 2025, Gavin Newsom was forced to stop admitting new illegal immigrants into the
01:14Medi-Cal program because they threatened to tank the entire system. But other than that, there really has
01:19been no cost-cutting in California. Now, there has been a huge boom in revenues thanks to the AI
01:24revolution, which has brought a lot more money into the California state government's coffers.
01:29But until there is some restraint on the spending side, you're going to see structural deficits far
01:34into the future. And that will be Gavin Newsom's legacy on leaving office at the end of this year.
Comments