The problem is that with businesses closed, people unemployed, tax revenues are way down, while expenses are way up and the constitutions of most states forbid deficits. Something’s gotta give. When I was living in IL I had the impression that the state’s contribution to the pension was entirely unfunded. In fact, even when a federally funded research grant provided funds to cover the state’s purported contribution to the pension fund, that money went simply into the state’s treasury. And when I left, taking my contribution with me, that federal money simply disappeared.
It’s tied to the Republicans’ (pretty successful) drive to dominate the federal judiciary. Bankruptcy of states would be overseen by federal courts. That’s his strategy in a nutshell-- on the surface.
But wait! That’s not all. There is even more underhandedness at work.
Everything Unca Mitch proposes is to benefit wealthy Republican individuals. No wonder they *lurve *him.
sedulously –> diligently, persistently (I didn’t know this word.)
Thank you for that. Which states are most likely to have to consider bankruptcy? Are they the wealthiest and most productive states, mostly led by Democratic governors? Or are they the poorest, least productive states, mostly led by Republican governors?
I don’t know which states… that will require some creative googling. If you search for the topic, articles from 2010-2011 come up from the last time the Pubs were talking about this. Constrain the search to the past year and see what you get. I’m off to take the clothes out of the dryer.
Here’s the punch line of the article:
This is why I don’t hate trump, but I absolutely hate McConnell.
I’ve heard a theory that McConnell knows demographics will make life very hard for the GOP in decades ahead. So that is why he prioritizes stacking the supreme court and appellate court.
Even if we get a progressive movement in the 2040s, the courts may just overturn a lot of the laws passed. We may get UHC, wealth tax, subsidized daycare, voting rights act, etc passed but the GOP judges may just invalidate them while giving the green light to right wing legislation.
Which is why even if you don’t support Biden, its better to vote for him anyway since Biden won’t appoint far right judges who sit on the bench for 30-50 years.
Frum’s article is interesting, but I don’t see how McConnell could possibly ram through a state bankruptcy bill this year. Even if he got something passed in the Senate, which seems doubtful to me, it would certainly die in the House.
Doesn’t the Contracts Clause of the US Constitution (“No State shall . . . pass any Bill of Attainder, ex post facto Law, or Law impairing the Obligation of Contracts”) mean that state bankruptcy would require a constitutional amendment?
No, this House won’t go for it. How about a presidential executive order? Then let our stacked courts worry about it in a few years, after the fait accompli is solid and the federal hostile takeover of blue states is history. Deploy troops to reluctant capitals to maintain order. Detain dissident governors and legislators. Maintain the peace. Right.
That’s a good question; I think it would. The argument against that (see UltraVires’s post above) is that it would be the federal bankruptcy court cancelling the contracts, not the state, but to me that’s a meaningless distinction. The state would still be initiating the process by declaring bankruptcy, and presumably the state legislature would have to pass a bill doing that. I know that the Illinois state constitution also has a contract protection clause, and I suspect other states do too. If McConnell managed to pass a bill allowing state bankruptcies, you’d likely have multiple states challenging the law in the courts and the SCOTUS would have to resolve these questions.
Allowing state bankruptcy would be enormous and hugely controversial, and it baffles me that McConnell is talking about it so casually. It reminds me of George W. Bush’s breezy talk about privatizing Social Security.
If state bankruptcy is unconstitutional due to the contract clause, then so is municipal bankruptcy which has been allowed for over 80 years. From the point of view of the US Constitution, there’s no such thing as a municipal government, it’s a mere limb of the state itself. Allowing the “City of Detroit” to declare bankruptcy is the same as allowing Michigan to declare bankruptcy, because Detroit is (from the federal perspective) just an agency set up by the state of Michigan for its own internal conveniences, no different from the Michigan Department of Transportation or the Michigan State Police.
The distinction the existing law makes is between a direct agency of a State Branch of Government like the Department of Transportation or the State Police or the Office of Courts Administration, and chartered entities with their own corporate legal personality, like an incorporated city or the Ports Authority, that has the capacity to issue its own bonds separate from the state general obligation debt.
See my post #5 upthread. Especially note this part, quoting “Kenneth Katkin, a law professor at the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern Kentucky University”:
As noted, a McConnell-instigated revision of federal bankruptcy code is most unlikely to be passed by this House unless the Dems are confined in protective custody.
In Michigan inability to reduce pensions is in the bloody state Constitution, because they knew back in the early '60s that a day like this would come when the vultures would be circling about that money. Please be reminded that pensions, public or private, are not a cost to the employer. They are paid for by the employee over the course of their working lifetime. As a retired public employee, I can only apologize to leader McConnell that not enough of us have died quickly enough to please him. (Or I can tell him to lick a doorknob.)
