Published Jul. 14, 2026at6:00am<\/p>\n
After eight years in office and eight growing budgets, Gavin Newsom\u2019s central legacy as governor is this: a vast expansion of social programs whose biggest beneficiaries are also some of his biggest political donors.<\/p>\n
Newsom\u2019s final budget for the 2026-27 fiscal year will total $539.1 billion (opens in new tab)<\/a> \u2014 36% more than that of his predecessor, Jerry Brown. (All figures are adjusted for inflation.) Of that, $344.3 billion goes to the California Health and Human Services Agency, which administers social programs. More than 90% of CHHS\u2019 annual spending goes to three programs, each of which grew faster than the state budget as a whole.\u00a0<\/p>\n The largest is Medi-Cal (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which consumes two-thirds of CHHS\u2019 annual spending and provides healthcare services to low-income Californians and families that meet eligibility requirements. Medi-Cal spending in Newsom\u2019s final year will be 55% more than it was in Brown\u2019s final year. The core difference between the two administrations\u2019 approaches to Medi-Cal is structural: Brown\u2019s era focused on federally funded expansions, extending coverage to low-income adults through the Affordable Care Act, which Washington financed almost entirely. Newsom\u2019s era has focused on state-funded expansions (opens in new tab)<\/a>, extending Medi-Cal to undocumented immigrants, which added billions of dollars annually.\u00a0<\/p>\n The second-largest CHHS program is the Department of Social Services (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which consumes 18% of CHHS annual spending and provides assistance to needy Californians. DSS spending in Newsom\u2019s final budget is up 77% from what it was under Brown. Some of the growth is due to accounting (childcare was transferred to DSS from the Department of Education in 2021), but the major driver was growth in spending on In-Home Supportive Services (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which provides in-home assistance to eligible elderly, blind, and disabled individuals. Spending on IHSS tripled (opens in new tab)<\/a> as the state expanded eligibility (opens in new tab)<\/a> regardless of immigration status and boosted wages for providers.<\/p>\n The third-largest CHHS program is the Department of Developmental Services (opens in new tab)<\/a>, which consumes 7% of annual spending and pays for services provided to people with developmental disabilities. Spending on DDS was up 117% from Brown\u2019s final year. Newsom has signed a series of bills that raised rates (opens in new tab)<\/a> for DDS service providers.\u00a0<\/p>\n By expanding access and raising rates and wages for service providers to Medi-Cal, DSS, and DDS, Newsom created big new social entitlements with big ramifications for budgets \u2014 and big sources of additional revenue for campaign supporters. Recipients of much of the $344.3 billion that CHHS will spend in 2026-27 will be members of the California Hospital Association, California Medical Association, California Nurses Association, Services Employees International Union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and other nonprofit organizations, corporations, and unions that rank among (opens in new tab)<\/a>top donors (opens in new tab)<\/a> to Newsom and his committees. In turn, Newsom has used the money for elections, ballot measures, and raising his national profile.<\/p>\n That\u2019s Newsom\u2019s brand of socialism: Enact more government services and route the money through service providers that advance your political career. Whether one approves or disapproves of expanded state spending on social programs, shouldn\u2019t we all disapprove of elected officials taking money from recipients of that spending?<\/p>\n Newsom is not unique in that regard. Former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently endorsed San Francisco\u2019s CEO tax, sponsored by SEIU, which has long been a top donor to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee that Pelosi spearheaded for decades.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republican legislators are not immune to similar behavior, gladly accepting donations from hospitals, doctors, and other providers that profit from state appropriations those legislators vote to approve. But that doesn\u2019t make it right. Bigger government has costs beyond the ledger: California\u2019s nearly 20 million workers (opens in new tab)<\/a> benefit more from private-sector demand than from public spending, and that demand shrinks whenever money is pulled out of the private sector to pay for more government. Newsom financed CHHS\u2019 growth with tax (opens in new tab)<\/a> increases (opens in new tab)<\/a> and raids of budget reserves (opens in new tab)<\/a> that raise the odds of future tax increases. I don\u2019t think it is a coincidence that California\u2019s unemployment rate leaped over 12 states to become the highest in the country (opens in new tab)<\/a> during the eight years in which Newsom expanded government. Whether or not that\u2019s a coincidence, it\u2019s certainly corrupt for a governor, or any state official, to accept donations from organizations that profit from the spending they helped create.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published Jul. 14, 2026at6:00am After eight years in office and eight growing budgets, Gavin Newsom\u2019s central legacy as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397937,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[37145,457,143,145,144,5476],"class_list":["post-397936","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-california-state-budget","tag-gavin-newsom","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-unions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397936","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397936"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397936\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397937"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397936"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397936"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397936"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}