A Blue-State Bailout in Disguise

Moral and Legal Authority:


We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion.   Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.  Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

– John Adams, Oct.11, 1798


 


A Blue-State Bailout in Disguise


President Obama’s job plan includes sending $200 billion dollars to states for public employees and union construction workers.  The President stated the plan is to “provide more jobs for teachers [and] more jobs for construction workers”


Intending to buy votes for Obama and the Democrats in next year’s elections, this is a continuation of an immoral transfer of money from the federal government to states.  Paul E. Peterson and Daniel Nadler of Harvard’s Program on Education Policy and Governance have traced where this “jobs investment” will be directed.  Their conclusions are stated In the Wall Street Journal:


These vast contributions to the coffers of state and local governments, though pitched as a jobs bill, are in reality the latest in a series of bailouts for debt-ridden state and local governments. They are of special benefit to states in the blue regions of the country where the president’s most fervent supporters reside.


This $200 billion is in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars sent to the states by Pelosi, Reid and Obama in 2009 and 2010.


Peterson and Nadler, as academics, observe that the heavily unionized “Blue” states have unfunded pension liabilities far exceeding the “Red” states.  Because of the Blue states’ unsafe debt burden, the states must pay higher interest rates.  For example, Illinois must pay an additional $700 million annually.


As a sop to public employees, in 2009/2010 Obama, Reid and Pelosi sent billions of dollars to the states.  This is an immoral taking of money from every American taxpayer, and future taxpayers to buy votes.  The following is an example of a scheme to protect public employees in 2010.  Not only did they send money to the public-employee unions but demanded they increase the number of public employees.  :  [Read: http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/teda/editorial-bailout-bribery]


Then news trickled out that the debt-growing legislation was a payday loan, not a charitable donation. Some $10 billion in federal handouts can’t be used to fill budget gaps created by recession-driven revenue shortfalls. No, the money must grow stretched education budgets and, as a condition of accepting the money, states must agree to maintain or increase education spending as a percentage of total state revenues for the next fiscal year.


Alas, this federal bribe and dictate involved additional political corruptions.  To secure the necessary votes, then-Majority Leader Reid threatened to cut federal money for shipbuilding, which would badly hurt the people of Maine.  Immorally, Reid offered to restore the money for shipbuilding to secure the votes of Maine’s Republican Senators Snowe and Collins.  Snowe and Collins succumbed, and Reid, Pelosi and Obama sent money to the states to help the public employee unions. This is corruption as usual in DC. 


[Read: http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/teda/jobs-bill-to-stop-teacher-layoffs-clears-major-hure]


Obama, Reid, Pelosi, Snowe and Collins are elite politicians that have and will continue to immorally abuse their power.   A great nation cannot exist until moral leadership is absolutely demanded by We the People.