San Francisco is staring down another budget deficit, and as usual, the city's solution is to make the most vulnerable people pay for decades of fiscal mismanagement.

The Department of Public Health is proposing nearly $3 million in cuts to services that seniors and disabled San Franciscans depend on. Clinics are on the chopping block. Management positions are supposedly being trimmed. If you've been paying attention to how this city operates, you already know which of those cuts will actually stick and which will quietly get walked back.

Let's be clear about what's happening here: San Francisco has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. This is a city that has seen its budget balloon to over $15 billion — larger than some state budgets — while basic services continue to deteriorate. And now, when the bill comes due, leadership reaches for the easiest political target: programs for people who don't have lobbyists, don't throw fundraisers, and don't have the energy to pack a Board of Supervisors meeting.

Meanwhile, the broader economic picture isn't exactly reassuring. As one Bay Area resident put it, "Should be worried about the AI bust. There are an incredible amount of dollars sunk, not just into AI, but the apparatuses around AI. Whatever you think the dot com bubble did, add a couple zeros and you'll be getting close." San Francisco's tax base is heavily dependent on a tech economy that could contract sharply if AI investment disappoints. Another local noted the catch-22 plainly: "If it turns out to be a bubble we're likely equally screwed. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, and everyone gets caught in the crossfire."

So here we are — a city banking its fiscal future on an industry boom that may or may not sustain itself, while cutting services for grandparents and people in wheelchairs right now.

Here's a radical thought: before you touch a single senior meal program or disability service, publish a full accounting of every management position, consultant contract, and duplicative program in the city budget. Let taxpayers see where the money actually goes. If San Francisco can afford a $15 billion budget, it can afford to protect its most vulnerable residents. It just has to want to.