As you may know, I held several town hall meetings last week. One of the many questions I was asked was “Would you support the Detroit bailout?” My answer was “Absolutely not.”
The question got me thinking. Is there any way President Obama could attempt to bail out Detroit without the approval of the elected representatives of the American people (the Congress)? After all, he’s been trying to go around Congress since he lost the House several years ago, by issuing executive orders, ordering the executive branch not to enforce our immigration laws, and in some cases just changing the law without authority (the employer mandate under Obamacare.)
Well, what I discovered is quite disturbing.
Detroit (and for that matter many cities across America) have been completely controlled by Democrats for decades now. During that time they entered into very generous contracts with their public employee unions (also controlled almost exclusively by Democrats) at the expense of taxpayers.
Detroit owes approximately $6 billion for promised healthcare coverage for its retirees, which it doesn’t have the money to pay for. Detroit also owes billions for retirement payments and other debts, but I’ll stick to the healthcare obligation for the purpose of explaining where the federal bailout comes in.
Since Detroit has filed bankruptcy, it can now void the contract it has with its public employees (subject to approval by the bankruptcy court.) Now here’s where YOUR money comes into play. Now that Obamacare is the law of the land (at least until we can successfully repeal it) Detroit can push all these retirees onto the Obamacare exchanges, and they’ll be paid for by federal taxpayers (YOU – at least if you’re part of the approximately half of Americans who still pay federal income taxes.)
To make matters worse, if this works for Detroit, there’s reason to believe that other cities that face financial challenges might consider the same option. And unfortunately there are a lot of local governments facing a lot of red ink, and trying to figure out what to do about it. And dumping their obligations onto you, the American taxpayer, might well be their solution.
And if your blood’s not boiling already, I’ll leave you with this. Over the weekend, Harry Reid, head of the Democrats in the Senate, was asked if Obamacare was just a temporary step towards the real goal, which is a total takeover of healthcare in America by the federal government (a single-payer system.) He replied “Yes, yes. Absolutely, yes.”
Their goal is to have the federal government control more and more of our lives. And as we lose our freedoms, we become more and more like much of the rest of the world. The central government grows more powerful, the individual freedoms we cherish as Americans diminish, until they are nonexistent.
We’ve got to stop all of this, before it’s too late.
Dick Morris has been talking about Detroit this week as well. Click here to hear what he’s been saying.
