Governor Gavin Newsom on 7/3/2024 (Photo: California OES)
Gov. Newsom Brags on His ‘Economic Blueprint’ While CA Businesses Get Hit with Higher Payroll Taxes
Governor Gaslight: Isn’t this taxation without representation?
By Katy Grimes, November 22, 2024 9:04 am
California Governor Gavin Newsom is on a listening tour of the state’s red counties, where he does all of the talking and gaslighting, and the people who voted for Trump have to listen.
Newsom said Thursday:
More jobs. More businesses. Higher wages. Faster. We’re launching our new Jobs First plan — small businesses and working people deserve better wages and more opportunities, especially in rural communities.
“Early next year, California is releasing the California Jobs First Economic Blueprint, a first-of-its-kind, bottom-up strategy to create good-paying jobs. From agriculture to clean energy & everything in between, we’re fostering sustainable growth & expansion across the state.”
Gaslighting much? “More jobs” have really only occurred in state government.
What California needs is a blue print for lower state individual and corporate income taxes, lower gas taxes and affordable electricity. But I digress.
What California needs is an honest governor. Newsom’s administration was so grossly negligent during his lockdown of the state, the EDD, the state’s unemployment agency, allowed tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to be lost to fraud.
The estimate on how much the EDD lost is anywhere between $31 billion and $40 billion sent to to illegitimate claimants, state and federal prisoners, international fraud rings, all of whom simply walked right into the department’s completely unprotected system, the Globe reported in 2023.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability investigated the California EDD after the Trump administration provided the EDD with over $1.8 billion to cover the department’s additional administrative costs caused by the pandemic.
That money must be paid back. The EDD started to re-pay the $1.8 billion after Gov. Newsom and the state legislature colluded to foist the re-payment of the federal debt onto the backs of California businesses.
Enter California Chef Andrew Gruel, who posted this horrifying message on X Thursday:
We just ran payroll. The payroll taxes were 2K higher than calculated. We called the payroll company. They explained (in summary) that California has a budget shortfall, and the federal government wants money back that it lent California for UI that it “lost.” They are making up for it by having business owners pay it. Keep in mind that it was around 10% of our total payroll. When people say, “Why isn’t California business-friendly?” remember this.
This is a textbook example of California’s wicked, mean, cruel and nasty business climate.
California has four state payroll taxes:
- Unemployment Insurance (UI) and Employment Training Tax (ETT) are paid by the employer (the EDD calls these “contributions” as if they are voluntary).
- State Disability Insurance (SDI) and Personal Income Tax (PIT) are withheld from employees’ wages.
Remember when Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that his budget had a $97.5 billion budget surplus? What happened to that?
“Newsom’s Department of Finance, based on one short-term spike in income taxes, projected that revenues from the state’s three largest sources would remain above $200 billion a year indefinitely,” Dan Walters reported. “Newsom then declared that the budget had a $97.5 billion surplus, although that number never appeared in any documents.”
California is reliant on personal and corporate income taxes for more than 75% of the state’s general fund revenues.
But Newsom’s finance department botched the tax revenues projection, which was due to a massive increase in federal aid during Newsom’s pandemic lockdowns, escalating Californians’ personal incomes to more than $3 trillion in 2021, and dropping by about $7 billion in 2022, Walters explained.
“Two years later, buried in its fine print, the deficit-ridden 2024-25 budget acknowledged that sales taxes and personal and corporate income tax revenues would fall well short of the $200 billion a year projection, estimating a $165.1 billion shortfall over four years,” Walters said.
The Legislative Analyst’s Office reports that California’s spending is much too high:
“…the state faces double‑digit operating deficits in the years to come. By historical standards, spending growth in this year’s outlook is high. Our estimate of annual, total spending growth across the forecast period—from 2025‑26 to 2028‑29—is 5.8 percent compared to an average of 3.5 percent in other recent outlooks. Meanwhile, revenue growth over the outlook window is just above 4 percent—lower than its historical average largely due to policy choices that end during the forecast window. Taken together, we view it as unlikely that revenue growth will be fast enough to catch up to ongoing spending.
So instead of paying down debt when California had higher revenues, Newsom and Democrats went on a spending spree of longterm social welfare programs, which the state now cannot afford. Therefore, businesses will be paying off the debt – debt which could have been avoided had Newsom and his appointees taken their jobs seriously.
As the Globe reported:
Overseeing the EDD during the pandemic was California Labor and Workforce Development Agency Secretary Julie Su, who confirmed that, in 2020, fraudsters stole at least $31 billion in unemployment benefits from California, the Globe reported. And 800,000 unemployment claims were paid late, along with 12.7 million delayed eligibility determinations.
But what led to the total $31 billion in fraudulent claims was when then-Secretary Julie Su made the decision to suspend most EDD eligibility requirements, according to the California State Audit. It was only federal oversight which caught this and notified the EDD that they could not suspend eligibility requirements.
Now Gov. Gavin Newsom is forcing California business owners like Chef Andrew Gruel with additional payroll tax to pay back the billions in fraudulent unemployment debt he and Julie Su allowed.
Doesn’t this feel a lot like taxation without representation?
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February 15, 2023
First the metropolitan areas around los angeles, the bay area and san diego getting good and hard the government they vote for, they have to be so sick of being screwed over by state, county and city governments that they massively support a ballot initiative that will fix the problem. The fix includes but is not limited to: voting on one day only; hand counting of ballots, nothing using software or connected to the internet; voter id required; when the number of votes cast equals the number of registered voters in a voting district, the counting stops. No roaming the state for weeks to “cure ballots.” Ban vote harvesting. Except for valid, previously verified absentee ballots, no voting by mail. Only citizens vote in any kind of election, including school related elections. Get rid of the “jungle primary,” return to candidates from all parties. Revoke automatic “motor voter” regisration. No home printing of ballots. The ballot rolls are cleared 6 months after an election, everyone exersizing the right to vote to reregister the year before the next election at least two months before the next, no same day registration. The ballot initiative has to be so massively supported by the population that “they” can’t rig the election with dead people and thousands registered as living at laundramats, gas stations and vacant lots.
Yes, Yes, YES!
At the same time —– that is, alongside banging the drum for “clean enough” elections —- we need to support Fix California — Ric Grenell’s effort — as much as possible. They have been doing great work over there. We’ll get to sanity one day soon, wait and see.
https://fixcalifornia.com/
I didn’t know Communism had a economic blueprint other than seize all the means of production and take away everything from everyone to benefit “dear leader”.
Just another example of his cruelty to the residents of California. He has all the signs of an abuser! He has no shame!
Katy Grimes is so right that Newsom touting his “California Jobs First Economic Blueprint” is just more gaslighting? No doubt any taxpayer funds allocated towards for it will go directly into the pockets of the criminal Democrat mafia and their cronies?
Thank you Katy for your continued journalism. I wish more folks would read this site,and think of all these issues we face in California.All the journalists for the California globe thank you!
The State is not a profit center and is not an economic engine that produces a product that we the customers need or want. The state provides a tax and regulation environment in which business either thrive or are strangled to their demise. The scope and the size of California government needs to be cut by at least 25%. We didn’t have a water problem until the state got more involved. We didn’t have an energy problem until the state got overly involved. The bottom line is that other than “liking” us Newsom doesn’t add any value to the California economy.
Hey “fair elections” where do I volunteer to get signatures for the ballot initiative??
The only way to level the playing field is with a ballot initiative!!!!
Keep the fire to his feet Katy, good job!
First, there has to be enough discontent over issues democrat politicians push on urban populations, which are the majority vote in california. Check the representation la county has in sacramento vs inyo county, another scenario is urban politicians dictating how rural farmers and ranchers farm and ranch. Neither a voter in san francisco nor his elected representative in sacramento has the slightest interest in what benefits voters in eastern kern county, all politics is local and personal. The discontent has to be organised and the ballot initiative for fair voting has to convincingly presented as the solution for positive change in california, a rollback of oppressive government. Of course the discontent has to be bordering on outrage to overcome the democrat assault utilizing lies and division and scurrilous “will destroy democracy” bs blizzard. It will have to withstand the way the discription of the initiative is written by the democrat government official who presents it. Then, like always, money has to be raised. I’m not sure where all the money goes, but I understand at least $850,000,000 is needed to run a successful ballot initiative campaign. I don’t know if that is an accurate figure.
Gasoline price is going up 65 cents a gallon in 2025 thanks to the recent CARB decision to tighten California’s “low carbon emission standards”. This will get some people’s attention. As a side note regarding the Democrat alleged concern for the environment, try web searching for something like “air pollution emissions from Mexico”. Is there anything in the news about this, ever? Right up there with the Tijuana River! Mexico announced a big “Green Policy” some years ago–even enticing foreign investors to build natural gas plants to lower emissions-and promptly turned around and cut those new plants out of their grid supply, using up all th e dirty fuel oil (dregs left from refining plants) and coal only allowing access to the new gas plants IF they need the additional capacity. Mexican emissions have gone up, not down as a result. Meanwhile China is blowing the roof off their emissions with hundreds of new coal-fired plants, all OK under Obama-Biden’s Paris Accords that let them go up as much as they want until 2030 when they promise to stop going up. Using alternative search engines on this subject is instructive, try the (Russian!) Yandex and see what you find. BTW the NewsNation channel’s Leland Vitert gets credit for being the only TV journalist I have seen to even bring up the subject of Mexican emissions, right next door and consistently ignored by the TV network news.
Newsome is like a slimy low rating game show host. And he wants to be president, heaven help us!