At CNN’s California governor debate on May 5, seven candidates had 90 minutes to explain what they’d do about a state staring down an $18 billion budget deficit this year — one the Legislative Analyst’s Office projects will grow to $35 billion by 2027-28.
The five Democrats on stage had different answers on taxes. They agreed on almost nothing else.
Tom Steyer supports the 2026 Billionaire Tax Act, a ballot measure that would impose a one-time 5% levy on the total wealth of California’s billionaires. Steyer said on stage that the proposal doesn’t go far enough — it should tax billionaires more than once. He also supports a new tax on AI companies to fund workforce training.
Katie Porter’s position: the billionaire tax is too narrow. “It’s a one-time tax, but we don’t have one-time revenue needs,” Porter said at the debate. She said billionaires could “chip in a little bit more” than the current proposal requires. Porter is running on more expansive taxation than Steyer, not less.
Xavier Becerra supports reinstating state-funded healthcare for undocumented immigrants — a program Newsom passed and then pared back — and declined to distance himself from Medicare for All, a full government takeover of California’s health insurance market. When candidates suggested he’d been softening on the policy, Becerra said flatly: “I haven’t changed.”
Antonio Villaraigosa was the one Democrat who opposed the billionaire tax, arguing it would accelerate the exit of wealthy residents. He has data on his side. California’s top income tax rate is already 13.3% — the highest in the nation — and the state’s population has been flat at 39.6 million while spending has climbed steadily under Newsom.
Matt Mahan, the most moderate Democrat on stage, called for suspending the state’s gas tax and said his fellow Democrats have “focused too much on expanding government rather than making it work better.” He also supports taxing AI companies to fund workforce programs — which means his path to a balanced budget still runs through a new tax on an industry that can move.
If you do a CTRL-F search through the debate transcript for a Democrat proposing to cut a major state spending program, you will find zero results.
Here is what four years of structural deficits — $125 billion in budget problems by the state’s own count — have been funding.
California’s high-speed rail project was budgeted at $33 billion when voters approved it in 2008. The current official estimate is $126 billion, with some analyses placing it as high as $231 billion. After nearly two decades, construction is limited to a 171-mile stretch between Merced and Bakersfield. There is no operational passenger service. Los Angeles to San Francisco — the original project voters approved — is not under construction.
Three of the five Democrats on stage — Steyer, Porter, and Becerra — support maintaining state-funded healthcare for undocumented immigrants. The same three support some version of expanded government healthcare. The state has a 13.3% top income tax rate, a $126 billion train between two Central Valley cities, an $18 billion deficit this year, and a $35 billion deficit projected for the year after.
The two Republicans offered a different direction. Steve Hilton proposed eliminating income taxes entirely on the first $100,000 of earnings, with a flat 7.5% rate above that. Chad Bianco called state-funded healthcare for undocumented immigrants “ridiculous.”
The $18 billion deficit is not a natural disaster. It is the result of a state that has spent $125 billion more than it has taken in over four years, on a tax base that is flat and an income tax structure that depends heavily on the decisions of a small number of high earners who have options about where to live.
None of the five Democrats in Monterey Park on Tuesday proposed to change any of that. They proposed to tax whoever is left.
