The Government Is Not the Economy

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) is very upset that the Obama administration has rejected the California state government’s request for a bailout. She tells the Washington Post:

This matters for the U.S., not just for California. I can’t speak for the president, but when you’ve got the 8th biggest economy in the world sitting as one of your 50 states, it’s hard to see how the country recovers if that state does not.

First, presumably Lofgren knows that the federal government is projecting a deficit of $1.8 trillion for the current fiscal year — so where is this emergency aid for California to come from?


But perhaps even more importantly, Lofgren seems to confuse the state of California with the State of California. That is, she confuses the people and the businesses of California with the state government. There’s no clear and direct relationship between the two. The state government is currently running a large deficit and is warning of a “fiscal meltdown.” Of course, as it continued to issue claims of fiscal meltdown and painful cuts over the past many years, California has continued to spend. The state has nearly tripled spending since 1990 (doubled in per capita terms). It went on a spending binge during the dotcom boom and never adjusted to the lower revenues after the bust. During the Schwarzenegger years the state has increased spending twice as fast as inflation and population growth. What were they thinking?


But a bailout for the government won’t necessarily help the recovery of the state’s economy. In fact, by increasing taxes and/​or borrowing, it would likely weaken the national economy. And by encouraging continued irresponsible spending by the state government, it would just be an enabler of destructive policies that suck money out of the productive sector of California’s economy. We all want the California economy to recover. But that’s not the same thing as giving more money to the California government.