As sure as sunrise, California's Gov. Gavin Newsom is blaming President Trump instead of himself for his state's monster homeless problem, say the only reason it's happening is that he doesn't get more federal taxpayer money to spend.

Get a load of what he said from Townhall, emphasis mine:

"So you get a sense then of the billion dollars we invested. The fact that we put a plan together, have an interagency council to address the issue for the first time in our state's history, that we've strategized the plan at a regional basis, that we were in Kern County today laying out our hundred day strategies — mayors, city administrators all across the state — and that we've asked the Trump administration for the one thing that he can do specifically and that's address the fair-market rent issue and help us support with vouchers additional resources so we can get people housing. It's not about abdicating responsibility. It's not about pointing fingers. It's saying to the president of the United States, 'if you want to help, you can help.'"

The governor's plan is to throw money at the problem without fixing the underlying housing shortage that has plagued the state for decades.

The reporter also asked the governor about his plan to help homeless people with mental health and drug abuse problems.

"People with behavioral health problems," Newsom responded, "that's an interesting issue because the Republican Party for decades has been cutting behavioral health funding, cutting brain health funding, consistently not supporting the efforts of the local, national, and state levels to do justice on that issue, so you're absolutely right the president can do a hell of a lot more."

More.  More.  He wants more.  And if Trump doesn't want to throw good money after bad, then he's the bad guy because he's not buying Newsom more homelessness.  He also cites other arcana — interesting piece here in the Daily Wire — but the bottom line is, he wants "free" money with no accountability on how he spends it — the cost goes to the taxpayers, the choice on how to spend goes to him, and the failed result goes to Trump.  And Trump is the bad guy, to boot.

Now, it's not as if the Trump administration is sending him nothing. Already the feds are shelling out $5 billion to the state for homelessness, according to a report in LAist.  The problem is how it's spent under Newsom, whose policies perpetrate homelessness, which is why half the nation's homeless sleeping rough on the streets are now in California.  Big giant welfare bureaucracies, always growing.  Greenie policies which prevent construction of new housing and drive the poor inland to the wildfire zones.  Large shellouts to the homeless, which ends up lining the pockets of drug dealers.  Zero enforcement of drug laws, camping out on city streets, public intoxication and quality of life crimes.  With Newsom around, more federal spending buys...more homelessness.

This, by the way, is a constant trope of the left, and many voters believe it.  More money, less homelessness.  Seems logical to those who don't look too closely.  But it never, ever, works that way.

Here's an excellent unsigned editorial from Issues & Insights, from some think-tanky expert, I suspect, titled "California Homelessness: That's Not How This Works," which takes on this very issue of government overspending on homelessness, which only incentivizes more of it.

It's truly an understatement when the the Acton Institute says that "government policies to reduce homelessness may have made the situation worse." California enables and encourages homelessness through an assortment of questionable measures.

Public urination and defecation are not prosecuted (and by implication are approved of); taking over public spaces is tolerated, as is open drug use; laws stand between the mentally ill homeless and treatment; and a regulatory framework restricts the supply of desperately needed new housing.

Meanwhile, a homeless-industrial complex stands firmly in the way of progress. It's made up of government bureaucracies, and homeless advocacy groups, the more radical of which regard homeless humans as an endangered species that cannot be removed from its natural habitat. They are relentless in blocking ideas and plans that would help their fellow man.

Allan Brownfeld, an author and former White House and congressional aide, says the greatest beneficiaries of the Johnson program have not been the intended targets but the bureaucracies who were charged to care for the welfare of others.

"In the so-called 'War On Poverty,' for example, programs were not designed to give money to the poor, whatever the merits of that would have been, but, instead, to give money to people who were to provide 'services' to the poor," he said. "The result has been that the only poverty such legislation corrected was that of its own employees."

As Thomas Sowell once said: You can have all the poverty you'd like to pay for.  Read the whole thing here.

Image credit: Grendelkhan via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.