California Gov. Gavin Newsom wants it both ways. For months, he has portrayed himself as a moderate, sensible executive who hews closer to the center than other Democrats. Recently, he even pushed through legislation to reform the environmental restrictions that have contributed to California’s out-of-control housing prices.
However, the “new” Newsom façade cannot mask the deep financial problems he and his policies have caused.
Newsom recently sued to prevent President Donald Trump from clawing back $4 billion in unspent federal funds from the state’s high-speed rail project. The president made the right call. Costs for the infamous “train to nowhere” ballooned to $128 billion, four times the initial estimate of $33 billion, and the federal government had already invested almost $7 billion. Newsom claims the president’s refusal to shovel tax dollars into its engine, which he boasts finally entered “the track-laying phase” five years overdue and a decade after groundbreaking, proves that “Trump wants to hand China the future.”
The lawsuit is one of many ways Newsom has tried to use federal tax dollars to plug the state’s billion-dollar 2025-2026 deficit and the $180 billion deficit run by the California Public Employee Retirement System, the nation’s costliest pension program, 25 percent of which remains unfunded.
He’s Tricksy, Preciouss
Newsom also strengthens his grasp on taxpayers’ wallets through a Medicaid accounting trick known as intergovernmental transfers. The state charges private healthcare providers a tax that gets quietly shifted to public providers. Newsom counts this paper-shuffling toward state Medicaid costs, padding his share of federal reimbursements to protect that unfunded pension. This unequal arrangement also favors public ambulance providers, whom Medi-Cal pays $1,168 per transport compared with $339 for the private sector.
Medicaid has long been aware of this, with the GAO issuing a report 21 years ago denouncing the gimmickry as “state financing schemes,” yet ledger-related chicanery has become Sacramento’s norm.
“These ambulance overcharges are typical of the way the California government games the federal Medicaid system,” said Fiscal Lab Executive Director William Beach, a former Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner. “Much of Washington’s spending and debt problems stem from abuses like this, and Congress should take steps to squeeze abuse out of means-tested programs like Medicaid and food stamps, as was done in the Big Beautiful Bill’s work requirements and its mandate that Medicaid patients have more skin in the game.”
(Remember, any Medicaid cuts will kill people.)
Insult to Injury
Newsom doesn’t just break families who need healthcare but may not be able to access it. He also leaves them to clean up the charred path blazed by his green extremism. While the state needs to clear a million acres of brush to control future wildfire outbreaks, Steven Greenhut of the R Street Institute told the House Judiciary Committee in February that it tends to clear less than a quarter of that amount annually due to burdensome green policies.
Newsom dissembles when he moderates on social issues. Although he recently called it “unfair” for trans-identifying men to compete in women’s sports, Newsom signed legislation that gives California “temporary emergency jurisdiction” over children whose parents would not initiate puberty-blockers or transgender hormone injections.
Similarly, although he will end Medi-Cal’s enrollment of most undocumented immigrants starting in January, he is the reason so many have padded the system. “You are looking at the poster child for sanctuary policy,” boasted then-Lt. Gov. Newsom in 2017. “What the heck is wrong with the Democratic Party that we don’t have the courage to stand up for it?”
Just like the streets of San Francisco, Newsom cleans up his liberal policies only when it is politically expedient. His rhetorical moderation is just lipstick on a pig, plastered on when a presidential bid crept within view.
California and the nation deserve better.
Another version of this story previously appeared on InsideSources.com.
Ben Johnson (@therightswriter) is a longtime conservative commentator and journalist.
