The Arena’s Buzzing for This $21 Billion Beatdown

Grab your bags of popcorn and get to poppin, folks, because it’s time to send Governor Gavin Newsom straight back to Hell—where the barbs are always hot and the punishment for your crimes are even hotter! Forget them old tired “b*tch slap you back to Africa” jabs; this time, we’re delivering a slamtastic rhetoric beatdown that’ll echo straight from Sacramento all the way to the coal raking depths below. Why the dramatic flair, you ask? Oh, just because California, under Newsom’s golden-boy reign, has managed to somehow default on a whopping $21 billion federal loan—yes, you heard that right—Gavin Newsom—21 billion dollar federal loan—default. His shenanigans are leaving businesses and taxpayers to foot the bill. A local business owner vents, "I’m paying $130 more per worker while Newsom plays Hollywood hero—send that bastard to Hell already!" So, now it's time for the political equivalent of a WWE Ladder Match, and if you listen closely enough, you can hear the crowd roaring for justice as we speak!

Well, wouldn't you know it? The saga kicked off with a $20 billion federal loan from the Trump administration back in 2020, designed to prop up California’s unemployment insurance system during that foolish ol' COVID-19 chaos. Most states paid it back with some sweet stimulus cash, but not our hero Gavin. Nope, he redirected those funds to shiny infrastructure projects and homelessness initiatives—priorities that sound noble until you realize the state’s unemployment trust fund was a measly $3 billion when the pandemic hit, forcing a $24 billion payout in 2020 alone.

Now, with the debt plumply ballooning to a whopping $21 billion (and counting, thanks to $593 million in interest this fiscal year alone), California employers are staring down a $42-per-employee payroll tax hike for 2026, with projections it could soar to $400 if Newsom doesn’t pull a financial rabbit out of his hat. But, with the way that fool conducts his business, we can certainly expect that this will just be another one of his fantastic Hollywood style swan dives into an empty pool that comes on as hard as his deficit does for the entire State of California.

Fraud Capital Crown and a Silent King Gavin

As if we needed anymore fuel added to this Hell-bound fire, it actually does get worse. A state auditor’s report dropped last week, crowning California the “Fraud Capital of America” with a staggering $2.5 billion in potential losses from food assistance "program errors". But wait, the financial fiasco doesn’t end there! Let’s not forget the Employment Development Department (EDD) scandal from 2021, where $31 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims—potentially the largest taxpayer scam in state history—slipped through the cracks. As of June 2022, only $1 billion has been clawed back, leaving Newsom’s administration with egg on its face and a lot of explaining to do. His silence however, is deafening—perhaps he’s too busy practicing his pucker face for when he meets his maker and has to start kissing some ass.

Meanwhile, the EDD’s woes are a national sideshow. Take Washington state, where a former unemployment office employee was recently busted for pocketing benefits and doling out kickbacks. Even though, it’s a mere warm-up act compared to the California Governor’s epic fail after epic fail. Systemic underfunding since the 1980s has left the state perpetually scrambling during every single downturn. The Legislative Analyst’s Office called it out in December 2024: California’s unemployment insurance system is a decades-old mess. And the fact that Newsom refused to use a $100 billion surplus a couple of years ago to pay down the debt has businesses in California vehemently fuming in absolute disgust.

Rob Lapsley of the California Business Roundtable has sounded the alarm, describing the escalating payroll tax hikes as a "hidden tax" that threatens to strangle small businesses and stifle economic growth across the state. This burdensome legacy, should it persist under Newsom's watch, could cement his tenure as a cautionary tale of fiscal mismanagement.

Preposterous Payroll Games and Presidential Pipe Dreams

Businesses aren’t taking this lying down. With payroll taxes potentially jumping to $130 per employee (and that’s a conservative estimate), small businesses just might start actually mailing their tax bills back to Sacramento with a super cheeky “return to sender” stamp. The California Chamber of Commerce begged for tax rebates earlier this year, but Newsom and the legislature shrugged it off, scrapping a $750 million allocation toward the loan in the 2024 budget. It’s like watching a magician pull a rabbit out of a hat—only to realize that with Gavin Newsom in charge, there was never really a rabbit there because he already ate it!

And let’s talk about Newsom’s national ambitions. Axios reported on December 15, 2025, that his 2028 presidential frontrunner status is continuously wobbling as Democrats clash themselves half to friggin death over his left-leaning policies. His trolling of President Trump and a savvy redistricting push in California earned him some street cred, we guess, but at the same time—rivals are sharpening their knives, pointing to his coastal elitism and overly repetitive fiscal fumbles.

The plotting and criticism of Gavin Newsom's failures has an adviser brushing it off as “ridiculous shadow boxing”, implying it as a dismissive response to the strategic efforts of other potential candidates and their consultants who are highlighting Newsom's unpopular left-leaning policies and fiscal challenges as liabilities in a broader primary race. But with all that said, California’s credit rating is definitely teetering and his state’s unemployment debt is also increasingly becoming an international punchline. So, those presidential dreams just might crash harder than a corny Hollywood blockbuster flop. Hell might be the only campaign trail left for him, because, when you put Gavin under a microscope, you can tell that he's a gosh darn good candidate for that place!

The Flying Elbow Kiss of Death: A Hellishly Rude Send-Off

So here we are, arena buzzing, and we're preparing to give Gavin the boot back to Hell—with the whole crowd watching (they paid good money to see this). With Gavin's admin accumulating a $21 billion debt, fraud scandals that just won’t quit, and crime rates soaring due to neglected funds, we'll be taking Gavin down and leaping off the top of the ladder with a supreme Flying Elbow Kiss of Death that's so devastating that it'll send him straight back to that nasty little abode we call Hell. Maybe he can use his time down there to negotiate with the devil for a better shot at fiscal responsibility, or in the very least, not such a scummy personality. But, for now, California taxpayers and businesses are still out there on their own, left holding the bag, while the rest of the world watches them get ripped apart by Newsom’s fiscal fiasco. Ready? Here it goes. Flying Elbow full-send: Game over, Governor—enjoy that!