California's Reckoning -- and Ours

08/03/2009 • Washington Post

California's budget debacle holds a lesson for America, but one we will probably ignore. For years, state leaders papered over the contradiction with loans and modest changes. By overwhelming these expedients, the recession triggered an inevitable reckoning. Here's the national lesson. There's a collision between high and rising demands for government services and the capacity of the economy How to produce the income and tax revenue to pay for those demands. That's true of California, where poor immigrants and their children have increased pressures for more government services. It's also true of the nation, where an aging population raises Social Security and Medicare spending. California is leading the transformation of politics into a form of collective torture: pay more (higher taxes), get less (lower services).