Remarks of The Hon. Chuck DeVore before the California Republican Party Spring Convention in Sacramento, California, March 1, 2013
Thank you so much for the opportunity to return to California and speak with you.
I certainly never anticipated this.
I attended my first California Republican Party convention in 1981 in Burlingame as a 19-year-old College Republican activist.
And, Jerry Brown was governor.
Today, Jerry Brown is still governor, but California has undergone massive changes, not all of them for the better.
In 1981, California’s state and local governments consumed 9.8 percent of per capita income. California’s tax burden was the 8th-highest in the nation.
By 2010, California’s government appetite grew to 11.2 percent of income.
Over the past 30 years we have grown vastly wealthier as a nation. Our consumer products are generally less expensive as a share of our income. We have personal computers. Cell phones. More and larger televisions. More cars and they’re far more reliable. We live longer and our medical technology is far better.
As we have grown more prosperous, the need for government services should have rightly shrunk, not grown.
Yet California government now consumes 14 percent more of the share of wealth than it did in 1981, a larger growth in government than in the rest of America.
Today, California’s state and local government levies the 4th-highest claim on per capita income in the nation—and that was before Gov. Brown’s $50 billion tax hike. Only Connecticut, New Jersey and New York take a bigger share of their resident’s money than does California.
Now, some of you know that I packed up the family and moved to Texas in late 2011...
