Every society has its own taboos. Those third rails which may not be touched under some circumstances.

To California Democrats, it’s their illegal alien ‘voting’ base who maintain the ghost districts at the heart of their power. All the public services that people actually need can be cut, but funding for illegal aliens and the ‘homeless’ whose manufactured existence serves to provide employment to a sizable core of the Democrat activist machine must roll on no matter how bad the economic situation may be.

This weekend, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a new deal with lawmakers to balance a $46.8 billion deficit which includes over $700 million in cuts to health care worker programs and a delay to expected pay raises next month.

Homelessness is among those investments seeing major budget wins, with an extension of a local homelessness program that got the green light for a sixth round of $1 billion dollars in funding. It’s money one business owner in Sacramento doesn’t see translating to actual change in the number of people who are homeless.

“I come back and forth from the Bay Area to Sacramento. I’ve never seen so many homeless ever. What’s this, L.A. now?” said Rashaan Reed, who owns FreezeWorld on J Street downtown. “How can you have a flourishing county if you’re not trying to help small business owners.”

Why would Gov. Newsom want to help small business owners? What have they ever done for him? Now illegal aliens are another matter.

The plan makes $16 billion in cuts, including a blanket 7.95% reduction in funding for nearly all state departments and the elimination of thousands of vacant positions, which are collectively expected to save nearly $3.7 billion. The Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation will take an additional $385 million cut at the urging of progressive lawmakers, far higher than what Newsom had originally sought for the shrinking prison system.

So more criminals will be free to roam the streets.

Other major reductions include $1.1 billion from various affordable housing programs, $746 million for health care workforce development and $500 million to build student housing. A scholarship program for middle-class college students will lose $110 million annually, about a fifth of what the governor had originally sought to cut.

Middle class students can go, but funding for illegals can only be temporarily paused.

More than $3 billion in previously promised funding to expand food benefits to undocumented immigrants,

And the core programs of funding illegals and bum services will be “protected.”

This will allow the state to protect what Newsom and legislative leaders touted in their announcement as “core programs,” including an expansion of Medi-Cal, California’s health care program for the poor, to all adults regardless of their immigration status, as well as increased funding for behavioral health, welfare grants and supplemental income for seniors. Local governments will receive another $1 billion to address homelessness.

I’m sure that billion will go to the same place all the previous billions have gone… into the pockets of the party’s political class.

Some things can be cut and some things can’t.