Leave it to the Russians to report on California's little budget problem. It's actually a concise and reasonably accurate overview of what's going on in CA.
Not a pretty sight. The state is now bankrupt with a $23 billion dollar budget hole to plug (see earlier post called California running out of options)
So here is the question: shouldn't the Recovery Bill help with the problem? If you don't remember the Recovery Bill with all the federal money that's being spent, here is a reminder from the NY Times.
If you look at the amounts allocated to California under the Recovery Bill, it adds up to a nice chunk of change. Here is what our friends from the Eureka state are getting:
This should make a dent in the old budget problem, right? It turns out that it's too little too late. The Recovery Bill is scheduled to spend about $50 billion nationally in fiscal 2009. Below is the "handouts" schedule of the "easy come, easy go" taxpayer money. The point is this will take a while to get to California and the bigger issue still is what happens after they spend the Recovery Bill money.