Cash strapped cities, states should go bankrupt and start over: Grover Norquist
More and more states and cities across the country, from Connecticut to Illinois and Seattle, are looking to tax hikes as the solution to mounting financial problems.
But when the FOX Business Network’s Stuart Varney asked if that way of funding spending had “run its course yet,” Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist responded: “They got themselves in these troubles, some of these states, with runaway spending, with pension plans that they can’t afford, that they made promises to the public sector unions that bankrupt their city or their state.”
According to Norquist, a lot of these financial woes are driven by pensions.
“Twenty and 30 years ago politicians said ‘I don’t have any money to give to special interests now, but I’ll tell you what, let me promise you pension money that will be coming in 20, 30 years from now. When I’m dead, someone else will be there when the city collapses or the state has these problems.’”
Norquist’s solution is to let these cities become insolvent.
“Cities can go bankrupt and cities that have overspent should go bankrupt and start again and people should vote out the leadership that got you there.”