California Is Totally F’d

California’s current budget gap and projected deficit for next year totals a whopping $42 billion – or more that seven times the current size of South Carolina’s entire state budget.

“We are heading toward a financial Armageddon,” said Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. “It’s not a tumor.”

Alright, the last half of that quote was from Kindergarten Cop. Sorry ’bout that …

The first part he actually said yesterday in Sacramento. Seriously.

Anyway, when it comes to sheer size, California’s financial woes dwarf those of the rest of the nation, which probably isn’t at all surprising seeing as the state does constitute the eighth-largest economy in the whole world (ninth when you cut out the porn).

No other state comes close to that except New York, which is currently facing a $1.4 billion budget gap for this year but a $12.5 billion gap for the coming year.

All told, forty-three states are facing current year budget deficits of $31.2 billion, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Beyond that, thirty-seven states are facing budget shortfalls totaling $48 billion for the coming fiscal year, and twenty-eight states have projected $61 billion worth of budget shortfalls for the following year.

Obviously, somebody should have seen this coming.

States grew their budgets by more than 40% over the last four years while dramatically expanding their debt, which is pretty shocking considering the billions in “lost revenue” during the 2001-03 economic funk.

Of course rather than cut government (and learn a valuable lesson about living within their means), states are more likely than not to receive a massive bailout from the federal government, which the last time we checked was in a bit of a sh*tstorm itself.

In fact, the latest price tag on the “states’ bailout” is $176 billion …

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