State of Illinois: Severely cut spending, go bankrupt, or both (Part 2)

If federal legislation is passed that paves the way for states to go bankrupt, Illinois should be first in line to take advantage. It’s time for our General Assembly Republicans to find a purpose for their lives and get behind such an idea. It’s irresponsible and immoral to be spending our kids’ money and making future financial commitments on their behalf.

There is an increasing number of voices calling for a return to fiscal sanity and the kind of fresh start a bankruptcy will bring. The vast majority of Americans who don’t serve in public office understand: You can’t spend more than you take in, and you can’t promise what you don’t have.

Here are a few excerpts from the column by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann, “To Save the States, Let ‘Em Declare Bankruptcy“:

“As Margaret Thatcher famously said, the problem with socialism is that sooner or later “you run out of other people’s money.”

[I]t’s time to amend the federal bankruptcy laws to create a procedure for state bankruptcies — allowing states to abrogate their municipal-union contracts from the school-board level on up.

States, in bankruptcy court, should be able to reorganize their finances so as to put themselves back on a stable footing.”

I couldn’t have said that better, nor this:

“No more will schools be run for the teachers and by the teachers — nor will such unions as the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees dominate state legislatures. School choice, charter schools and even voucher programs will have a chance to flourish…

Giving insolvent states the power to break their union contracts would alter dramatically the balance of political power all across the nation.”

Thomas Sowell is one of my favorite economists and columnists. A few days ago he wrote a piece titled, “Honest Answer To Gov’t Woes Is Bankruptcy.” Sowell wrote:

“Bankruptcy conveys the plain facts that political rhetoric tries to conceal. It tells people who depended on the bankrupt government that they can no longer depend on that bankrupt government. It tells the voters who elected that bankrupt government, with its big spending promises, that they made a bad mistake that they would be wise to avoid making again in the future…

Politics being what it is, we are sure to hear all sorts of doomsday rhetoric at the thought of cutbacks in government spending. The poor will be starving in the streets, to hear the politicians and the media tell it.

But the amount of money it would take to keep the poor from starving in the streets is chump change compared to how much it would take to keep on feeding unions, subsidized businesses and other special interests who are robbing the taxpayers blind…

Bankruptcy says: ‘We just don’t have the money.’ End of discussion.”

Illinois doesn’t have the money. And neither do our children.