Despite stubbornly high inflation and record-high credit card debt, the economy added 2.7 million jobs last year while unemployment hovered just below 4%. But not all states did as well. California, the gem of Democratic uniparty governance, added just 154,000 jobs, and joblessness stagnated above 5%.

While states such as Florida and Texas grew their workforce by 3.4% and 3.3%, respectively, California’s grew by just 0.87%. All this was while the state budget deficit ballooned to a record $73 billion as revenues from personal income tax collection dropped by 25%.

Why is California’s economy sputtering while the rest of the nation moves ahead?

The simplest answer is that California’s population is shrinking. After more than 100 years of steady growth, California is exporting more people than it is importing. The state continues to have golden sunshine, natural beauty, and warm winters, but bad policy decisions by Democratic politicians who run the state mean people simply don’t want to live there anymore.

The biggest reason people are leaving is the cost of housing. On the coast where the best jobs are, California has some of the most expensive housing in the nation. To afford a median-priced home in San Francisco, a household needs to make $400,000 a year. Actual households in San Francisco make just one-third of that: $136,000.

California’s housing crisis is due to excessive environmental regulation, which makes it impossible to build new homes. While California built just fewer than 120,000 new homes in 2020, Texas built more than 260,000.

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An Invasion of Squatters

The ugly reality of nine million illegal aliens could be coming to a neighborhood near you.

HIGHGATE, Vt.—At dawn or dusk, Kristy Brow used to enjoy alone time walking in the woods on her 21-acre property in Highgate, Vermont, a small rural town near the U.S.–Canada border.

Lately, however, she’s cautious—she’s worried about potential encounters with illegal immigrants along the remote logging trail.

“I don’t go out by myself anymore—especially at night,” said Mrs. Brow, who runs a dog obedience business from her home.

“It’s unsettling. You can’t feel relaxed anymore,” she said. “You want to be safe in your own house and on your property.

“It’s getting bad. Sometimes, you see them on the interstate, looking for a ride.”

Mrs. Brow and her husband are both avid hunters and have deer stands set up on their property. Their game cameras often record illegal immigrants passing through.

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BIDEN’S $7.3 Trillion Nightmare

Joe Biden’s budget proposal is a campaign pitch that would be disastrous in practice.

Our first thought when seeing Joe Biden’s $7.3 trillion budget proposal was that he must have transposed the numbers and meant $3.7 trillion. But then we remembered reality and our own warnings from four years ago — that “emergency” COVID spending would create a new floor for federal spending, and there would be no looking back.

When Biden took office, the national debt was $27.7 trillion, but here we are, $34.5 trillion in debt and counting, and all President Fiscal Responsibility wants to do is tax more and spend even more than that.

His budget represents an 18% increase over two years, and he’s proposing massive deficits as far as the eye can see. He wants spending to reach nearly 25% of GDP on federal outlays, which is a major increase over the 21% average of his 50 years in Washington. It’s also a lot more than tax revenue will provide — even at roughly 20% of GDP, which is far higher than the 50-year average of 17.3%.

Biden wants almost $5 trillion in tax hikes, yet that won’t even begin to fund his spending plans. This is the same guy who doubled the deficit last year and then boasted five times in his State of the Union address last week that he had “cut the deficit.” Heck, he’s got the gall to claim this budget proposal cuts the deficit by $3 trillion in 10 years. From what alternate reality?

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