Posted on 05/27/2009 1:04:23 PM PDT by SmithL
Sacramento, Calif. (AP) -- If AIG was too big to fail, how about the world's eighth-largest economy?
In a move with only one modern-day precedent, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Democratic lawmakers are pressing the Obama administration and members of Congress for federal loan guarantees to help the state out of a desperate, multibillion-dollar jam.
California is not asking for cash, like the tens of billions given to AIG, General Motors or Morgan Stanley. Instead, the state with the worst credit rating in the nation is asking that Washington act as a sort of co-signer on the state's borrowing, to be backed up with money from the Troubled Asset Relief Program.
California leaders say that would make it easier and cheaper for the state to borrow money on the bond market, reducing the interest rate by as much as half and saving taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Obama administration has responded cautiously to the idea, and members of Congress from other states worry that it would put the federal government in the business of backing municipal bonds — a job traditionally held by investment banks.
They worry also that the U.S. government could overextend itself and risk its triple-A credit rating if California and other states or cities in distress start coming to Washington hat in hand.
But California leaders warn that without assistance from Washington, the nation's most populous state could fall deeper into a financial abyss and resort to even bigger spending cuts and layoffs, becoming a drag on the economic recovery of the nation as a whole.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I want a pony.
Let CA fail. If they can’t figure out how to stop spending money, then they deserve to fail.
Maybe the should have started worrying about what the job of gov't was before they decided to go into business with banks, insurance companies, car manufacturers, etc.
As a citizen of another state, I say...no.
The stupid tax-and-spend liberals and RINOs made their bed.
Now let them lie in it.
Pie. I want Pie. I want Blueberry Pie, with ice cream.
That’s a good one! The busted flat us gov. backing the busted flat california gov.
free money for everyone
Total BS! You live in a state and elect responsible leaders who spend carefully and live within their means. Others elect scum who spend like crazy on social program after social program. Why should the responsible states have to pay for the irresponsible ones?
Who's going to back the federal government?
HEY AHNOLD:
SEND THE ILLEGALS HOME to lessen the burden on the school, welfare and healthcare systems.
My niece is an OB/GYN who took her pre-med at HAAAAVVAAAAADDD! Needless to say, she emerged from that experience a FLAMING, BLEEDING HEART LIBERAL. (She
stopped catching babies and went into research when her malpractice premiums exceeded her annual earnings.)
Upon completing her medical training at yet another liberal university, she interned at a hospital near the border in San Diego.
It was there that a mystical transformation took place: She began to connect the heavy deductions from the slave wage GROSS EARNINGS for which she busted her butt for as many as 72 virtually sleepless hours in a row with the taxis and jalopies regularly sliding to the curb in front of the ER.
Many of them contained pregnant illegals who won the race to deliver their babies HERE. She caught many of those “anchor babies” who, under the current — and ERRONEOUS — interpretation of the 14th Amendment were IMMEDIATELY NEW AMERICANS. The mother – who, obviously, could not care for the child if she were back in her native land — could not be deported now even if the INS and the political bosses WANTED her deported . And as the mother of a new US citizen, the woman could remain here for about as long as she cared to – and that was usually for life.
Most of those patients were welfare recipients and the deliveries were charity cases: The bill for the hospital’s – and HER services – were routinely spread over the bills of those who DO pay. And what the other users of those facilities don’t cover went back to the taxpayers.
And since my niece was now a taxpayer, they were costing HER.
And while she may not exactly be a libertarian, today she’s now a LOOONNNNG way from Haaaavaaaaaad.
And just so the bleeders who might see this don’t think me some sort of ethnocentric bigot, I submit this problem is MORE than just about illegals.
Before my oldest daughter was born at University Hospital in Cleveland in 1967, I sat in the main lobby as welfare mother-to-be after welfare mother-to-be shuffled through the door to the maternity ER for THEIR free deliveries.
Before WE could take OUR daughter home, I had to cough up over 3 grand. And that was a great deal of dough in 1967, especially for a guy just out of the USAF.
As I wrote the check, I remembered the magazine article I’d recently read by a hospital administrator from Massachusetts who admitted that all US hospitals practiced a form of medical Marxism, spreading the costs of care for indigents over the bills of those who DO pay for care. Given the move to socialism here, it probably will never be otherwise: Not counting Byzantine complexity and confusion, government produces – and has — NOTHING unless it first takes it from some PERSON. SOMEBODY ALWAYS PAYS.
The illegals have been using the emergency rooms of our hospitals for their health-care, almost always at no charge to them. That cost is either spread over other users or the taxpayers. We have seen a national epidemic of hospital closings due to their insolvency, much of it caused by the burden of trying to render care to PEOPLE WHO SHOULDN’T EVEN BE HERE, denying care to native-born citizens who normally pay their bills and their taxes.
Look, I have a big enough problem paying for the 3rd and 4th generation slackers and welfare bums who were BORN here.
It’s time we stopped paying for those who were not.
The feds can’y even back up their own spending so what makes California think the feds will bail them out. Welcome to fantasy island. De plane, boss, de plane!
(hint, hint) California has the richest retired public employees in the world. (IMHO).
CA refuses to cut govt union workers extortion or illegal alien extortion.
Huh???
"There's simply no better stimulus than guaranteeing state and local bonds.
Double huh???
No f***ing way.
Slash spending, cut the fat state employee pensions, and reduce business taxes to stimulate the state economy.
Once that’s done, cap expenditures to match expected tax revenue, and you’ve got a balanced budget. Problem solved without bankruptcy.
Citizens want Calif. to go pound sand.
HEY ARNIE AND DEMO LEADERS, TOO BAD
The Federal Government should just back every transaction, period. To do any less would, I’m sure, be a violation of the Equal Protection clause in the Constituion. Not to mention, racist, sexist, and homophobic.
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