"California's economic troubles mirror the country's. The partisan divide that President Barack Obama deplored in his State of the Union speech last week infects state government as well.
Health care reform seems trapped in political and financial gridlock in Washington; health care for the poor is threatened in California if the governor doesn't get billions of dollars from the federal government, which he probably won't. Obama's health care plan is on life support after a Massachusetts election that may have turned on voters' lack of support for the reform. In California, the state Senate has brought back a single-payer health care plan, but the governor has already vetoed a similar bill twice and no one thinks the state can afford it.
It was stimulus money from taxpayers that kept the national economy from collapsing; these dollars helped California weather a funding catastrophe last year."
