Gather around my friends. Let old Johnny g give you the story of his field trip to Sacramento. So yesterday I went to Sacramento. I went to testify in a hearing of the California State Senate Health Committee about a
bad abortion bill. Basically, it's this bill Abe forty. It's basically trying to replace this bad Biden era regulation that Trump just rescinded to try to interpret a federal law governing emergency rooms and emergency rooms that take Medicare and Medicaid patients, trying to say that they have to do x Y and z, and that X y and Z is provide abortion. So I went to testify against it. So I testify during this committee.
Hearing, and I want to.
Not so much that committee hearing. I mean, I think that bill is bad. I could probably talk about it on Right to Life radio. There's not too much to say about it. It's really bad. I mean if I went on and on about every single bad pro abortion law that's being passed in the state legislature, it would you know. That's why we have a whole show for it. But and you should encourage your state senator and encourage your state assembly member to vote no on AB forty.
It's a really bad bill.
I think they kind of want every emergency room in California to have the resources on hand to perform abortions. I don't think they actually want it for emergency abortions even I think they just want everyone performing abortions all the time. They want emergency rooms to have MiFi pristone, which is the abortion pill, which is not used for emergency situations anyway.
AB forty is really bad.
But I want to tell you about the broader experience and just the atmosphere in Sacramento, because it is so divorced from reality. First, I get there and I park, I find a meter, and I park a couple of blocks away from the capitol, and I walk past the offices of SEIU. S CiU has a big office right near the Capitol, which I laughed, I joked about.
I took a picture of it and posted it on Twitter.
Oh, it's so fun to visit the seat of all political authority in California. Hey, there's a big building with a dome on top of it over there. Maybe I'll go check that out too. Just because SEIU basically runs the state legislature and Indeed, I don't think I've ever been to the Capitol, and I've been there a bunch of times.
I don't think I've ever been to.
Sacramento and not seen a large presence of SEIU T shirt clad people out there lobbying for something. And indeed, today, yesterday rather it was no different. I go there, s CiU has a whole like.
Picnic lunch going on on the lawn outside of the Capitol building.
They've got DJ playing music, They've got food, They've got T shirts that the people are sitting around having like a gazillion people. I saw their charter buses parked nearby. Looked like they were bussed in from San Francisco, if you know, that's where the charter bus was from anyway, So uh, and you know, just having a good I
don't even know what they were lobbying about. I assume they're lobbying about the budget bill, because as I for reasons I will get into as we go along, there's a lot of agita on the left about the whole situation with California state budget. Now, I was I met with some folks who were helping me out with coordinating the testimony, and then I walked over to that. They're
they're renovating the Capitol right now. It's a gazillion bajillion dollar renovation that of course, the state legislature passed a law to exempt that construction process from SIQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act, and other kinds of environmental laws that us little folk have to deal with if we want to build anything or do any construction. But the state legislature managed to exempt themselves for the project of renovating the state capital. They passed a law to exempt themselves
from that. But the renovation to the state Capitol building is costing a gazillion dollars, way more than is necessary, and they've been working on it for years. So they're holding a lot of hearings, and that they've moved all the senators and the assembly members' offices to this other building that's on O Street, a couple about a block or two away from the actual capital building itself, and that's where they have a lot of committee hearings. So
I walked over to O Street. I go into the committee room, and I'm supposed to go to a Senate Health Committee hearing. My bill is the first bill they're going to hear, So I get there. I try to get there early. I get there about fifty minutes forty five minutes early, and I get there for the tail end of the Senate Budget Committee their meeting.
Now, I don't know.
How closely you followed the news, but there's a lot of storm and drawing over California's state budget over the last month.
Governor Newsom in May did his it's.
Called the May revise, so every May the government, So let me take it back in January, the governor gives his budget proposal.
After the April tax Day.
The governor then gives what's called the May revive, is to the budget. He revises his budget proposal from January, and this revision is meant to reflect whatever changes updates in expected revenue have happened since April fifteenth, which is tax day. Okay, So if we gathered as much in state tax revenue as we sort of anticipated back in January, then we don't need to change very much. If we collected a lot less, then we got to cut things.
If we collected a lot more, maybe we allocate things differently. So back in May, Governor Newsom announced his revision to the state budget, and it's a dire, dire, dire budgetary situation. We're staring down the barrel of a twelve billion dollar deficit again, another you know, thirty year in a row with a big deficit. California is now facing. According to sort of the non partisan budget analysts from the state,
California's facing what's called a structural deficit. What that means is, it's not like, oh, we just had another happened to have another bad year and revenue, you know, is getting outpaced by spending. No, we have now put ourselves in a position where our spending commitments are going to outstrip
revenues on a consistent basis. We are, in a consistent basis of year over year, we're going to have deficit spending by about ten to twenty billion dollars unless we really course correct and cut back, hold back, retreat from a lot of the commitments we have made. Now, Governor Newsom gives his May budget revision proposal, and I cannot express to you how furious everyone in the Capitol is with him. Everyone who can't do math is really angry.
And that's most of the people in the building. Okay, they are so mad, and it's a thing of they live on a different planet from us, from you and me, from those of us who can do math, who say, well, geez, we're deficit spending, so I guess we gotta cut things. That's not gonna be fun, you know, But eventually there's a thing you have to cut that someone will be
upset about. Anyone who's run a business knows that feeling that eventually you have to cut things, and you have to cut things in ways that are unpleasant and not good.
And that's just the way it is.
Now, one of the big things that was brought up. So I'm in this. I get there early. I find myself in the room for the tail end of Senate Budget Committee hearing.
And this is a committee hearing.
To review the budget bill, not Governor Newsom's may revision to the budget bill, but sort of the counter proposal to Newsom coming from the state Legislature itself, from the State Assembly in the State Senate. The State Assembly and the State Senate work together. They put together their sort of response to Governor Newsom, and it's it deficit spends more than Newsom. Basically, it cuts fewer things than Newsom cut.
It rolls back a lot of his cuts, and the format for the Budget Committee hearing was a little weird. It seems different from what I'm used to. Maybe that's just the way the Budget Committee works is you had just a whole line of folks from different organizations coming up to the microphone to talk for I don't know what the time limit was, if it seemed like everyone had about four or five minutes apiece to talk, representing different organizations, to say what they thought about the new
Senate and Assembly budget bill. And everyone was trashing the Newsome budget proposal. Everyone was talking about how horrible the Newsome budget proposal is, how punitive it is, how it's hurting people precisely when the Trump administration is using militarized Everyone thought everything Ice was doing was militarized militarized attacks.
On immigrants.
No one ever said illegal aliens, No one ever made any distinction between documented or undocumented, just immigrants. And it's horrible, and that governor knew some cut these programs.
This is horrible. These weak and vulnerable communities.
To do this at this time is terrible, And it was just taken as a given by like all these people who are clearly very at home being in the Capitol and talking, it was clear that Newsoone's persona on grata. When it came time for the members of the Budget Committee to vote, the vote was really quite surprising. Now, all of the committees in Sacramento, they're they're heavily stacked in favor of Democrats, and that kind of makes sense.
Democrats have, you know, three quarters of the seats, so they have, you know, obviously the overwhelming majority of everyone on an individual committee is going.
To be Democrats.
So the Budget Committee had eighteen members, five of whom are Republicans. Not all the Republicans are there, not all the Democrats are there either, And you've got person after person after person coming up and being like Newsom's thing is terrible. But one of the things that was really surprising to me was that, Okay, so here's Newsom's proposal. Newsom's proposal is still deficit spending, like it's not a thing Republicans would like. Then you've got the State Assembly
and State Senate budget bill. They're spending more. We Republicans would like it less. But these left wing groups that feel so totally at home, that feel so comfortable that feel like they deserve their place and are outraged that they're not getting what they want in Sacramento.
These left wing groups, a lot of them were mad not just at Newsom's proposal, but at the more fiscally profligate Assembly and State Senate proposal. They thought they.
Weren't spending enough, so much so that the bill passed out of the committee on a vote of ten to six, with three Democrats voting no on it. I'm presuming the other Republicans were going to come and probably put it to ten to eight or closer than that, but only ten Democrats as of yesterday voted for the thing. Three Democrats voted no Senator Derazzo, Senator Menhevar, and Senator Weaver Pearson, who voted not present, which is effectively the same as no.
So you had two senators vote no. One refused to vote on it.
A sizeable chunk of Democrats in the state legislature, they're not even apparently there's gonna be a decent chunk of Democrats in the state legislature who are not going to vote for this because it's not profligate enough. So again, like I just want to emphasize this to you guys. These people have so many more votes than we do in the state Assembly, in the state Senate. These people have so much more power in Sacramento than you and
I do. You know, don't let anyone show you some like county map.
Well, what if we got rid of the fraud. Okay, guys, even if we got rid of all the fraud.
I'm not sure that it does anything. I mean, you look at favorability ratings. Gavin Newsom is still at forty four percent and Donald Trump's at twenty nine percent. I don't think we're flipping the state read anytime soon. I don't care how many county wide maps you show me showing.
Oh, look at all this red area of California. Yet nobody lives in a lot of the red areas.
There's like three blue areas, and it's where the huge majority of the people live. And I'm just saying, these people are living in an alternate reality where math doesn't exist, where spending to a deficit doesn't exist, where we don't
have to account for that somehow. Now, when we return, I want to talk about the attitudes surrounding illegal immigrants, illegal immigration, how it relates to the Trump The Trump initiated raids by ice and again, how everyone in that building in Sacramento is thinking in ways that are completely.
Foreign to you and me. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
There's a pole that's been put out by the Public Policy Institute of California. Should California provide health insurance to undocumented immigrants? Fifty eight percent of Californians oppose giving health insurance to quote, undocumented immigrants illegal aliens. Only forty one percent of Californians are in favor. That's a big split. Fifty eight percent of Californians oppose giving health insurance to
illegal aliens, forty one percent are in favor. Now, as I've been talking about in the first segment, I went on a trip to Sacramento yesterday. For the day, I went to testify in opposition to a bad abortion related bill in the state legislature.
But I got to.
Kind of hang out and see other committee hearings and hear other things and learn sort of the attitudes of what's going on in that place, and had the luck of sitting in on a State Senate Budget Committee hearing.
Yesterday.
The State Senate Budget Committee voted to pass the Joint Assembly and Senate budget deal, which is clawing back a lot of the cuts that Newsom has made. Newsome made a bunch of cuts to the state budget in recognition of the fact that we're staring down the barrel of a twelve billion dollar deficit. And I want to talk about just the attitudes towards illegal aliens that that committee hearing sort of evidenced. First, you got to understand, Sacramento
is crawling with lobbyists. It's crawling with people who represent and lobby for all kinds of different organizations, people who make the trip up from La or over from San Francisco, or you know, lobbyists who just live in Sacramento and represent a number of different clients. But it's these people who seem very comfortable to me anyways, seem very comfortable and confident being there, that they work for, as you know, lobbying entities for all these different industries or for all
these different entities. And so many of the people in the room for that budget committee hearing were representatives of different kinds of left aligned nonprofits that do all kinds of stuff with immigrants, with various kinds of you know, child welfare. This that the other, you know, County of Los Angeles doing a gazillion different organizations that all of a lot of whom might seem like, well, they're helping feed the poors, so that's not politically aligned.
But obviously everyone there is a.
Liberal, and that's just I feel like if you take a survey, that's a huge percentage of everyone who's just walking around in the halls in the state legislative office buildings.
The attitude that they took towards Newsome rolling back coverage for illegal aliens for medical and that's the signature thing that Newsom has cut is limiting that we're not going to accept certain kinds of illegal aliens into medical because we accepted a bunch of illegal aliens into medical and it was way more expensive than we anticipated.
So we're going to freeze that.
We're not going to let any basically limiting the eligibility of these groups. The budget proposal from the State Assembly and State Senate, I think it softens newsome position a bit, but it still retains that there's certain groups of illegal aliens that are not going to be eligible for medical. This was the chief point of furious.
Anger, as Samuel L. Jackson said during Pulp Fiction, furious anger.
The chief point of furious anger on the part of these liberal activists who are in the room for this Budget committee hearing.
How can you do this to immigrants when the Trump administration is weaponizing military raids with ice and attacking immigrants. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. How can you do this? This is the most vulnerable population in California. To this extent, I want you to understand how these people think, and so much so that there are several Democrats who voted no on this bill.
I don't know all the reasons why they voted no, but I suspect that's one of them. Okay, so yeah, you had two Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee vote no on it. One refused to vote on it, which has the same ultimate effect as voting no. When you and I see that someone's in the country unlawfully without permission, without appropriate legal permission, either they snuck across the border when they weren't supposed to, evading immigration authorities, or they
over state of visa or whatever. You and I look at that and rightly think, well, that makes us less inclined to give them some form of government aid support, largesse.
You've broken the law. You now shouldn't be.
Here because the penalty for what you're doing is usually deportation. So we don't want you. You're not supposed to be here, You're legally not supposed to be here. So no, I don't want to give you more stuff. That is how we think of it. In fact, that's how fifty eight percent of Californians think of it. In a very liberal state, even still fifty eight percent of Californians think that way. They don't want to give health insurance medical coverage to
illegal aliens in that building in Sacramento. They view the fact that you're in the country illegally as actually a greater incentive to give you aid, largesse and help because you're more vulnerable as a result. This is our most like I remember one of the people coming up and
speaking about this during this budget committee hearing. One of these activist group representatives said, this is the most vulnerable patient in California, the most vulnerable group of people in California, and they're so vulnerable right now they're facing attacks from
the Trump administration. How can you cut back their healthcare coverage at a time like this, and this group of all people, they it's almost like they genuinely view not being in the country legally as like a protected category that should be deserving of, like a form of affirmative action, like the way that they would want to do for you know, giving racial preferences or you know, preferences to LGBT persons.
The fact that you're in the country illegally puts you.
Higher in the area of people we should be concerned about. That is how totally backwards these people think. When we return the idea of new taxes and the lack of second order thinking. Next, on the John Girardi Show, there's a proposal that Democrats are kicking around that is so stupid that I kind of makes your head explode, but it sort of reveals the absolute lack of any kind of second order thinking, thinking through not just the immediate result, but the consequences that will follow.
After the immediate result.
I don't feel like Democrats think about this at all, especially in California. I just think that they assume that you can impose some kind of regulation or duty on a business and then they will just comply with that thing, accept something that hurts their profits and then not do anything else. In response, Newsom clearly thought that with his stupid regulation on oil refineries in California, oh, just maintaining a higher supply of oil all the time to avoid gas price hikes during the summer.
Easy. Oh, these greedy oil companies spike their prices. They know that there's going to be an increase in demand.
They should just keep a higher supply all the time. And the oil companies say, you realize if we do that, it's going to add tons of costs to us, and we have to make the calculus of like, is it worth our time to keep investing the money to maintain these refined if we can't make as much money and we have to keep our prices high inflated all the time. If you pass this law, we might just pull out
our refineries. And that would be disastrous for you because it would massively lower supply of gasoline in California and massively increase prices. And Newsom said, whoh, well, I don't
care you gas companies are greedy. So he signs the law, and what happens two major oil refineries in California shut down and we're going to be looking down the barrel in twenty twenty six of gas being like six dollars a gallon, six seven dollars a gallon up and down the state gas prices are about to spike massively, so
there's no second order thinking. Democrats get so myopically focused on whatever their hobby horses, either corporations being evil or something like that, that they'll just impose some tax and pose some regulation to show those greedy companies, those greedy corporations what for, without thinking through, oh, well, that could have bad consequences on the little guy. Because I can assure you the multi gazillionaire, multi multimillionaire execs at the
oil company you hate, they're not suffering. And you know who is suffering, Everyone who had a job at those oil refineries who's now lost their job. And now everyone in California who has to pay way higher gas taxes because Gavin Newsom had a little fit of a little fit of peak at greedy gas companies. A similar thing
I feel is about to happen now. It's just at the discussion phase, and I don't know that Democrats have the votes to do it yet, but it's getting kicked around and you've got people like Scott Wiener saying, oh, it's an interesting idea. Scott Wiener, by the way, who's the chair of the Senate Budget Committee.
Less I say about Scott Wiener the better anyway.
So what's this proposal. What Democrats are seeing is we are facing structural deficits. Year over year, our commitments to spending outstrip our revenues by ten to twenty billion dollars. And that that's what a structural deficit is. That that's the that's the situation that California finds itself in. It's really bad. So we have to fix the problem. And you got to. I mean, at the end of the day,
there's only two ways you can do that. You either cut what you're going to spend, or you increase your revenue.
And how do you increase revenue.
Well, you either collect you increase taxes and hope that people don't leave the state in such a degree that that would offset the amount of extra tax revenue you're collecting. And so Democrats are thinking, we're going to increase some taxes. That's what's being kicked around. The idea is let's kick around the idea of increasing taxes and on whom are we going to increase taxes. We're going to increase taxes on quote.
Big businesses, So in what way? Why? How? And towards what?
Well, one of the big problems. One of the big reasons why we're facing a structural deficit is medical. Okay, we are spending a ton of money on medical. A huge percentage of Californians are on medical. That percentage is just growing and growing. Gavin Newsom opened up medical eligibility to illegal aliens that was way more expensive than anyone anticipated, So that's sort of the one of the big things
that's driving this new structural deficit idea. And one of the reasons why so many people are on medical is because of how expensive it is to provide health insurance to your employees. And what a lot of big companies have wound up doing is just hiring part time employees, massively overstaffing themselves with part time employees rather than full time employees, so you don't have to pay for health insurance. With the thought of well, medical eligibility has increased so
much that people can just get medical. So it's basically you have large corporations taking advantage of the fact that Democrats have so massively increased medical eligibility that they basically have said, well, we're just not going to pay health insurance. Then we're just not going to hire these people as full time employees. So we'll have this person work twenty nine hours a week rather than thirty, which is kind of the normal threshold for full time. We'll have this
person work twenty nine hours a week part time. No health insurance benefits, go get medical. Now that's not how I run right to life of Central California. I think a lot of small businesses try not to do that with employees that are good employees that they're they're dedicated to and want to take care of for the long haul. And employees who want to recruit good people recognize they have to step up. But a lot of big corporations have taken that posture. Now I'm not defending this. I'm
not saying this is good or ethical business. I think that it is a response to a lot of problems that Democrats themselves have made. If California wasn't such a tax and regulatory heavy state as it is, if California hadn't you know, so massively, and perhaps one could argue
profit will get expanded medical eligibility. Maybe corporations would be more open to would need to to stay competitive, would be more open to paying their employees with health insurance benefits and hiring more full time people and having more health insurance benefits being offered rather than relying on medical
I can see the critique of the corporations. I think it's fair, But I also can understand that the corporations may have been pushed there by a bunch of bad dumb Democrat policies as well as a lot of other bad dumb Democrat policies that just generally increase cost of living and cost of doing business all across the fruit, all across the state. But you know, I'm not here to say all the corporations are clean and pure as the wind drivens.
No, No, I don't you know.
I think corporations, big corporations in America, and especially in California, have done nothing to deserve conservatives, you know, weeping and fawning, you know, esteem or concern big corporations, you know, big time corporate America was as aggressive a proponent of the cultural left as anybody, so they you know, I'm not shedding big alligator tears for Amazon or anyone like that. However, the Democrats idea is a big tax on corporations to pay for medical a new tax healthcare related tax.
On big businesses in California.
I can guarantee you this is not going to work well because, again, just Democrats seem to think that, Okay, here's a corporation, it's operating a certain way. We're going to increase taxes on them that will result in their profits dropping, and nothing different will happen. They will take no other action in response to us increasing their taxes which results in their profits dropping. Do they not understand
how corporations work. Corporations don't work that way. They will do something to correct in order to try to keep their profits up. That's what they do. That's what every corporation does will try to do. So here's how they're going to do it. I'll give you two options. Now, let me give you three. The way that corporations are going to respond to new healthcare taxes in already the
highest tax state in the Union. Corporations who are still operating in California are operating in the highest tax state in the Union. They've all thought about going to Texas. They've all thought about going to Nevada. They've all thought about going to Florida, They've all thought of going to Idaho.
Here's what's gonna happen.
They're gonna either lay off employees to keep their profits up, they are going to move out of state and lay off their employees, or whatever good or service that company offers to consumers the general public. They're going to massively increase the prices, so the costs are going to be borne by people losing their jobs and or the general public paying more and another increase in cost of living to Californians.
I agree.
I would love corporations act more responsibly, but just imposing a tax is not gonna do that. They are going to pass the cost off to someone else. You can't stop them from doing that. I cannot fathom how these people can't do any level of second order thinking to think, oh, yeah, we'll just in the highest tax state in the Union, We'll just impose more taxes on corporations. They're going to either fire employees or pass the costs off to us, or they're just gonna leave.
That's what's gonna happen.
It's so stupid these but that's the attitude in that building. The state legislature exists in an alternate universe where math and basic mechanisms of the economy just don't seem to operate. It's astonishing when don't we return One quick thought about the California National Guard and how they're being deployed.
I don't think the media is really talking about it super accurately.
Next on the John Girardi Show, So one of the things I learned about Governor President Trump's activation of the California National Guard at which Gavin Newsom is trying to legally challenge and stop and lost his request for a temporary restraining order which he filed with the Northern District of California because he was judge shopping and tried to find the most liberal federal judicial district that he could file the law.
Student.
Yeah, the riots are in Los Angeles, but Newsom was suing to stop it in San Francisco because all the judges in the Northern District of California, which is based in San Francisco, are Democrat appointees. So what the National Guard is being asked to do is just stand around and protect areas of federal property.
That's it.
They're not executing the ICE rates. And that's the thing is the relevant law that's being cited is basically deals with either a rebellion or interference making it impossible to engage in the work of federal law enforcement. And that's what's happened now. I don't know that ICE can show up somewhere without it being a problem. And now you've got LA Unified getting cops to police the outside of.
Areas where like graduations are.
Happening, which I don't want anyone to get picked up by ICE during a graduation ceremony. I guess that seems a bit more than a bit traumatizing. But are we going to try and set up a genuine LA cops fighting against ICE officers kind of conflict like that seems like a really bad idea. But anyway, I think Newsom is acting as if the use of these National Guard troops is we're weaponizing the Donald Trump is taking over. No, the National Guard troops are there to protect federal buildings.
That's all they're being asked to do. So anyway, I find the whole thing to be a silly controversy, and I think Trump is in the right, that'll do it. John Girardi Show, See next time on Power Talk