Newsom to Struggling Parents: ‘Forget Rent and Groceries—Here’s a Box of Overpriced State Diapers’

California is the most unaffordable state in the union, where the cost of living is a punishing 11 percent above the national average. Rents for an ordinary two-bedroom apartment average $2,200–$2,700 monthly statewide. Gas prices flirt with $6.16 per gallon—the highest in the nation—while electricity rates hover at 33–35 cents per kilowatt-hour, nearly double the U.S. average. 

Factor in groceries, childcare, and healthcare and the result is California’s shameful status as the state with the highest cost-of-living-adjusted poverty rate in the country and a homelessness crisis with more than 180,000 people living on the streets. 

Families are fleeing in droves, packing up U-Haul trucks, and heading for cheaper lives in Texas, Nevada, and Arizona. This disaster, of course, is entirely of Sacramento’s own making.

Yet faced with these crushing realities, California Gov. Gavin Newsom has chosen to ride to the rescue with 400 free diapers at hospital discharge—his big and bold idea that will surely turn the tide and save California.

Yes, really. This is not satire. This is official state policy. Behold the glorious “Golden State Start” program, rolling out this summer at 65–75 hospitals, mostly serving Medi-Cal families. New parents will receive a shiny box of state-branded diapers courtesy of the politically connected nonprofit Baby2Baby. No pesky income test. No boring paperwork. Just 400 government-approved diapers to kick off that beautiful California newborn journey.

The price tag for taxpayers: $7.4 million already spent, and another $12.5 million requested, for a grand total approaching $20 million to distribute roughly 40 million diapers in the opening act. All this for a program that covers only about a quarter of births initially, with plans to expand using even more public money.

A newborn goes through eight to 12 diapers a day. That generous government box lasts a grand total of five to six weeks. Then reality hits like a 3 a.m. blowout: families are back paying $80–$120 every single month for diapers, with prices up 45 percent since the pandemic. The “solution” evaporates almost as fast as Newsom’s credibility during budget shortfalls.

But here’s the punchline that makes this whole charade performance art at its finest: taxpayers aren’t actually saving families much money. Those 400 diapers cost a normal person $80–$120 at Costco, Target, or Amazon (12–25 cents each in bulk). Under Newsom’s brilliant master plan, the state spends around 50 cents per diaper after manufacturing contracts, warehousing, hospital logistics, nonprofit overhead, and the inevitable Sacramento grift. Translation: California will pay roughly $200 in taxpayer funds to deliver $100 worth of diapers.

We’re paying double—sometimes triple—so Gavin Newsom can play hero for five pathetic weeks. And it gets even better: Baby2Baby’s co-CEO, Norah Weinstein, sits on the board of Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s own nonprofit, the California Partners Project. 

The First Partner’s network helped facilitate the partnership. Cozy, right? Private diaper banks have been quietly doing this work for years at a fraction of the cost. Cash transfers, tax credits, or simply eliminating the sales tax on diapers forever would let parents buy what actually fits their kid. But that wouldn’t generate the glossy photo-op or allow money to flow through favored insiders.

The absurdity is comedic, if not outright insulting, when you dare stack this stunt against California’s crushing problems. One single month of rent in Los Angeles equals 25 to 30 times the diaper “savings”—and it arrives like clockwork, draining family budgets relentlessly. 

Decades of zoning zealotry, environmental red tape, and endless lawsuits have murdered housing supply. Newsom offers no serious deregulation, just more performative programs layered on top of the dysfunction he helped create. 

Gas prices extract an extra $65–$80 monthly from the average family driving 1,000 miles, thanks to the nation’s highest taxes, cap-and-trade grift, boutique fuel rules, and refinery exodus engineered by Sacramento. 

Electricity bills run $200 to $400 higher per month than in most other states because of aggressive renewable mandates, unreliable solar-and-wind experiments, and a fragile grid that forces blackouts and insane peak pricing. 

Throw in sky-high grocery bills inflated by regulation and taxes, $2,000-plus monthly childcare costs, and healthcare premiums that lead the nation, and Newsom’s diaper box looks not just small—it looks insulting and pathetic.

This is virtue signaling elevated to an art form—Sacramento’s signature contribution to governance. Identify a real but relatively minor pain point. Partner with a well-connected nonprofit tied to the governor’s wife. Spend multiples of what the private sector charges. Hold a press conference with the First Partner beaming beside you. Declare victory. Then ignore the $2,500 rents, $6 gas, and sky-high power bills that actually determine whether young families can survive in the state.

California doesn’t need more symbolic handouts from an out-of-touch governor. It needs leaders willing to slash housing regulations, reform disastrous energy policy, cut taxes on everyday essentials, and stop treating taxpayers like an unlimited ATM for expensive feel-good stunts. 

Instead, while the state burns with unaffordability, we get 400 diapers that run out faster than Newsom’s poll numbers at a $6-a-gallon gas pump.

Golden State Start is a punchline delivered at taxpayer expense. A state that can’t house its people, fuel its cars, or keep the lights on affordably has decided the answer to family struggles is a short stack of overpriced government diapers. 

The joke, as always, is on the hard-working Californians left footing the bill while the real crises grow worse by the year under Newsom’s watch.