Krugman -- State of Decline

The recall isn't just a case of hardball politics. It's also a grand act of evasion: in the face of a severe fiscal crisis, voters are being invited to focus not on hard choices but on personality. Replacing Gray Davis with someone more likable isn't going to pay the bills.

And California's slide into irresponsibility, in which politicians refuse to acknowledge any connection between the government services the public demands and the taxes that pay for those services, is being replicated all across America.

The key factor in rising California spending has been the effort to rebuild a crippled education system.

Proposition 13, the 1978 cap on property taxes, led to a progressive starvation of California's once-lauded public schools. By 1994, the state had the largest class sizes in the nation; its reading scores were on a par with Mississippi's.

Voters wanted this shameful situation remedied. Indeed, much of the recent growth of education spending was mandated by a rather complex measure called Proposition 98. So when conservatives denounce "runaway government spending" in California, what they're really talking about is the effort to hire more teachers and repair decrepit school buildings.

Outside the Social Security system, the federal government is now running a deficit equal to a third of its spending — worse than California. The administration says it will never, ever contemplate increasing taxes; it says it will narrow the deficit through spending restraint, but has never said what spending it intends to restrain.

If the federal government isn't in crisis, that's only because — unlike state governments — it isn't obliged to balance its budget each year. And so far bond markets have been willing to give the feds the benefit of the doubt.

But the people now running the country are every bit as irresponsible as those blocking a serious response to California's crisis. And sooner or later that irresponsibility will have the usual consequences. California, here we come.