California's problem is spending? That's a myth

The inflation factor, further, isn't the consumer price index, which rose about 35% over the period, but a separate federal index of state and local purchases. This makes sense because the state buys relatively less of what's measured by the CPI, like bread and hamburger meat, and relatively more of what's measured by the government index, like healthcare, heavy equipment and educated workers.

That said, it's worth examining where the state does spend money, and why.

To dispense with a common bugaboo, yes, the state spends plenty on illegal immigrants. How much is impossible to specify because no one knows how many live in the state or what services they use.

My colleague George Skelton recently estimated this cost, net of the federal government's skinflint contribution, at some $5 billion a year. As he observed, undocumented workers contribute plenty in taxes, too.

I would further add that we employ these people to tend our farms and gardens, build our homes and help raise our children.

In any event, far more blame for the deficit belongs to California voters. Year in, year out, they enact spending mandates at the polls, often without endowing a revenue source.

"Budget management really is in the hands of the voters," says Assembly Budget Committee Chairwoman Noreen Evans (D-Santa Rosa), who recently posted a video online cogently outlining the dysfunctional budget process.

Some of these programs have hidden costs -- well, not so deeply hidden. The three-strikes law saddled the state with hundreds of millions in costs to prosecute and jail thousands of innocuous defendants. After Proposition 63 expanded mental health services in 2004, the Mental Health Department's budget expanded from $370 million to $1.5 billion.

From 1998 to the present, by my count, voters passed 27 separate bond issues to pay for school buildings, libraries, hospitals, highways, a high-speed rail system, stem cell research, veterans facilities, clean water and air, and more. These may be mostly worthy amenities, but that doesn't mean they pay for themselves.

Since 2000, the legislative analyst's office reports, $85 billion in such borrowing has been authorized at the ballot box -- half of it in 2006 alone. Annual payments on these bonds have climbed from $2.5 billion in 1998 to more than $5 billion this year.

Then there's budgetary borrowing, those little subterfuges so favored by our political leaders, which include the $15-billion deficit bond issue of 2004, the governor's version of a credit card max-out binge.