If the G20 summit illuminated anything, it was the stark differences between European and U.S. fiscal policy (note that the term is used loosely). For the past several years, both fixated upon the pipe dream of spending our way to prosperity, and it hasn't worked out as envisioned. As the interest piles up and the bills - both financial and political - start to accumulate, the Europeans have decided that it might be time to swear off; to go on the wagon, so to speak.
Obama, by contrast, wants to keep the printing presses going and continue running up a tab. It seems curious that in a time when "progressives" speak constantly of "sustainability", they continue to act in an unsustainable manner.
Nanny Pelosi and David Obey want to give a $10 billion bailout to public teacher unions, but recognizing that Americans are already angry over their previous bailouts, they're going for a stealth move: they're holding up a Defense appropriations bill in hopes of attaching their bailout to a critical Defense funding measure. The package was supposed to be up for consideration last Friday, but Republicans made it clear that they weren't going for it. Without Republican support, the bill won't go anywhere because Leftists oppose "war funding".
Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged Congress to approve additional war funding by July 4 or risk forcing the Pentagon to curtail defense operations and eventually stop paying some active-duty service members.
Gates told Senate appropriators he is “becoming increasingly concerned” by the delay in the approval of a $33 billion war supplemental for the remainder of this fiscal year.
“We begin to have to do stupid things if the supplemental isn’t passed by the Fourth of July recess,” Gates said at a hearing on Wednesday.
But union bailouts are much more important to Democratic critters than are the folks on the lines. Don't look for things to get better, either: things are about to implode, and the problem is due to politicians kicking the can down the road. With public employee pensions, we've hit the end of the road. Illinois is expected to hit bankruptcy in eight years; 19 other states will be in the same boat by 2025.
We're looking at bailouts on an unimaginable scale. That's because the pension plans are guaranteed contracts, and rather than acting to modify the contracts when they had the opportunity to do so, politicians just kept shuffling on and whistling. And why not? Many of them, such as in Oregon, are covered by the very pension plan they were supposed to monitor.