One out of every eight workers in the Golden State are unemployed today. That, combined with the state’s insatiable appetite for welfare programs it can’t afford, has lead to California borrowing $40 million per day just to fund unemployment programs.

Here’s the bigger problem, though: The lender is the federal government. The same federal government that is itself borrowing money in order to fund out-of-control entitlement programs we also can’t afford.

With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers, California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government to pay unemployment insurance.

The Los Angeles Times reports that the state owes $8.6 billion already, and will have to come up with a $362-million payment to Washington by the end of next September.

And for those of you laughing at California for its fiscal recklessness, consider this: It’s just one of 32 states that have so far borrowed a combined $41 billion — just to pay for unemployment claims. California is hardly alone in this state of fiscal insanity, though it’s definitely the worst offender.

As one commenter says over at Gateway Pundit, we have one bankrupt entity (California) borrowing money from another bankrupt entity (the federal government) in order to send unemployment payments to the bankrupt citizens of the first aforementioned bankrupt entity (again, California).

One of these days America will come to the realization that we can’t afford every welfare program on the books. The time is coming for difficult choices. Americans need to be ready to make those choices. Either that or they’ll have to drop their opposition to higher taxes. We just can’t continue to rack-up debt.