McConnell Says He Favors Letting States Declare Bankruptcy

[alp227]

Source: Bloomberg

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Wednesday he favors allowing states struggling with high public employee pension costs amid the burdens of the pandemic response to declare bankruptcy rather than giving them a federal bailout.

“I would certainly be in favor of allowing states to use the bankruptcy route,” he said Wednesday in response to a question on the syndicated Hugh Hewitt radio show. “It’s saved some cities, and there’s no good reason for it not to be available.”

The host cited California, Illinois and Connecticut as states that had given too much to public employee unions, and McConnell said he was reluctant to take on more debt for any rescue.

“You raised yourself the important issue of what states have done, many of them have done to themselves with their pension programs,” he said. “There’s not going to be any desire on the Republican side to bail out state pensions by borrowing money from future generations.”

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-22/mcconnell-says-he-favors-allowing-states-to-declare-bankruptcy

[grumpyduck]

1. That POS

can go fuck himself on an ADA-approved door handle.

IMHO, he is the worst excuse for a U.S. Senator that this nation has ever seen.

[Roy Rolling]

2. Translation

Screw the retirees on lifetime pensions promised by companies they worked their whole lives for.

It’s always like that. Republicans promise if someone sacrifices NOW for a future benefit, when the benefit comes due Republicans are long gone.

[Grokenstein]

3. Insurance, religion, labor negotiations...all the same.

"Give up everything now, and later--after it's too late to do anything about it once you realize we were lying our asses off the entire time--we promise that you'll be rewarded beyond your wildest imaginations!! Scout's honor! Swear on Bible!"

[FoxNewsSucks]

13. Republicons are not only gone,

they're the lousy MF'ers who stole what was promised.

[JmAln]

30. And screw the pensions of public servants

such as police officers and firefighters. That's what the repukes want here. Any public employee who votes republican sure isn't voting in their best interest.

[RRDrummer]

4. No chance this

leads to massive and avoidable problems. Oh well, throw a few more trill at the masters of the universe, I'm sure it'll be fine.

[Blue Owl]

5. Who gives a fuck what that shitstick thinks

Get bent McConnell

[rurallib]

6. I sure hope his opponent can hang this big time around his neck

for that matter, around the neck of every fucking Republican.

[Grokenstein]

7. Maybe the only time you'll hear a Republickscum

...oppose "borrowing money from future generations." How's the deficit doing, fellas?

[Lonestarblue]

8. I wish Mike Bloomberg would send a team to help Amy McGrath.

Defeating McConnell would send one hell of a message to Republican leaders. Amy is a good candidate, but she did not run the best campaign in her last election. Kentuckians are already irritated because a previous Republican governor (I think it was Ernie Fletcher) invested teachers’ pensions in hedge funds and lost a good bit of it. When Bevin was elected, he tried to cut pensions severely, and Teachers rose up in protest for days on end. So because of bad Republican decisions, the state is not in good financial position. It should not go over well with voters to hear McConnell say just let them declare bankruptcy when he said nothing at all about providing simulus money to big corporations.

The Bloomberg team would be doing a huge service to take on McConnell.

[SunSeeker]

19. THIS

[not fooled]

20. Is Bloomberg doing anything now?

I thought once he knew Sanders and Warren were out of the race, his participation vanished other than handing off some funds.

[KPN]

24. Sure seems that way. But I haven't been looking for him so

maybe it only looks like.

[DeSmet]

9. Now massive unnecessary tax breaks

for the filthy rich there's something future generations can burden.

[Chainfire]

10. Everybody has to favor something

Personally, I would favor seeing McConnell on a scaffold. All legal of course and tied up with a big hemp bow.

[Brainfodder]

23. I must insist on short drop for this creep?

[Laurian]

11. This scares the shit out of me.

I’m retired and rely on the pension I contributed to for 30 years. I am also caregiver for my husband with Alzheimer’s disease.

Seems we can either die a horrible death from the virus or die on the street when our pensions disappear and we are destitute.

I hate Republicans.

[KPN]

25. Did you see the post earlier here today about SS

paying out more than it takes in this year? Projected insolvency by 2035. Rs must be ecstatic. Their idea of fixing any program that benefits the public at large is killing it.

[Laurian]

27. I did and that adds to my anxiety.

Under President Obama, we had regained some (nowhere near all) of our losses from the 2008 debacle and we have been very careful with expenses, etc. so that we could remain self sufficient. Now this....

[KPN]

28. You are not alone. It seems our nation, society, way of life

are in a tail spin. Good reason to be anxious. It normally makes good sense to ignore rather than worry about what is not in our personal control, but this isn’t normal. I can only hope we wake up to the need to actually do something about it. The comparisons made to how Germans responded to the Nazis in the 30s are not a reach anymore.

[StevieM]

12. This is what Mitt Romney had in mind when he said "let Detroit go bankrupt."

He meant that their workers had been overpaid all along in his opinion. And this was an opportunity to retroactively cut their salaries buy reducing their pensions and health care benefits. It was also a chance to cut the salaries of current auto workers.

[sop]

14. Republicans have been pointing to public employees' pensions and benefits for years,

creating envy and using resentment to divide working class Americans. Rather than pay all private sector employees a living wage, with adequate healthcare and retirements benefits on par with those in the public sector, Republicans have tried to pit one group of workers against the other.

The GOP's divisive message of envy and resentment has been quite effective. "Why should taxpayers be forced to pay pensions and benefits for those lazy, greedy public employees when you hard-working private sector workers don't receive them?" they ask Republican voters. Using their age-old divide-and-conquer techniques, Republicans want to eliminate all pensions and benefits for public sector employees, turning all workers into subsistence wage slaves,

It's no coincidence most public sector employees are often union members, and their pensions and benefits have been won through collective bargaining. Republicans have done everything in their power to destroy private sector unions. Corporate America has been eliminating, downsizing, outsourcing and offshoring well paid union jobs for decades, but it's been harder for the GOP to destroy public service unions and eliminate their jobs.

Many of these public sector jobs can't be outsourced and eliminated as easily, though privatization of the public commons has been another favorite Republican strategy. Of course, police unions are always exempted from these efforts. The wealthy need cops to protect from the great unwashed when the economic inequality becomes intolerable.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

15. Yet these dumb fucking rubes will vote for his sub-human ass, as usual. nt

[mahina]

16. Hey, we've got millionaires to feed here people. Move along now

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

17. He'll want the US to default next.

[WVreaper]

18. Let Kentucky go first.

[progree]

21. People who bought municipal bond funds - state bankruptcies will impact those too

Virtually all financial advisors and columnists advise not having all your money in stocks, but rather a mix of stocks and fixed income, usually bonds and bond funds. And those who fled from stocks in the past month or years probably put some of their money in bond funds.

If you bought municipal bond funds, know that some of their holdings are issued by states.

What a bankruptcy means is they quit making payment on their debt.

So if you thought that getting out of stocks and into bonds was a safe choice.... and you thought you'd rather help government entities like cities, counties, and states, as opposed to getting corporate bonds ... and thus got municipal bonds (aside from their tax-exempt characteristics and despite their skimpy yields) ... well, this is a heads-up.

[Grins]

32. Didn't the Fed offer $1.5 Trillion to back up the bond market?

I wonder if they will weigh-in on those bond issuing states defaulting?

[JI7]

22. Evil Piece of Shit

[marble falls]

26. Well of course he does and he is "unanimous about it".

[DeminPennswoods]

29. IIRC, Kentuckians staged a huge protest over this

very issue last year when Bevin tried something similar. Messing with people's money is dumb politics. Hope McGrath's campaign jumps on it.

[Firestorm49]

31. "......by borrowing from future generations". ??? Why worry?

This, after they’ve run up the biggest deficit in our country’s history?

As usual, it appears Moscow Mitch had his magic mushrooms for breakfast.

[Marthe48]

33. that withered ball sack

has condemned some states to poverty by his lack of ability, his greed, his in of humanity