"Detroit is America’s future"

From Jonathan S. Tobin at CommentaryMagazine.com: 

The collapse of what was once one of America’s great cities should also inform us about the way the liberal project is dooming municipal and state governments around the country as well as Washington to a sea of debt that cannot be sustained.

Detroit isn’t just the most spectacular example of urban blight.  It’s the poster child for the consequences of liberal governance...

While other large cities, such as New York and Philadelphia, underwent crises that were met and overcome in the last generation before undergoing revivals, Detroit has been going downhill for more than 60 years.  While Detroit had particular problems that may not have been faced elsewhere, the basic conundrum is not unique.  But rather than face up to the need to change the old liberal formula of expanding government and letting corruption go unchecked, this bastion of liberalism refused to alter its course...

The lesson here is that a government that continued to overpromise and create unfunded liabilities to please political constituencies cannot survive indefinitely.  And that goes straight to the glaring problem that was the foundation of President Obama’s false boasts about “saving Detroit” that caused Romney so much trouble last fall.

Detroit’s bankruptcy shows that federal bailouts for industries can’t solve all the country’s problems, especially when cities are sinking under the weight of generous municipal contracts for public employees.  It’s true that many other cities that are facing shortfalls because of debts they’ve signed off on to pay off unions are working better than Detroit, where 40 percent of the street lights don’t work and it takes nearly an hour for police to arrive at an average high-priority emergency.

But unless the power of unions to bankrupt municipalities and state governments is cut back—much as Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have tried to do—everywhere, Detroit won’t be the last city to go bankrupt. The accumulation of debt to pay off the promises made by liberals is a problem that threatens cities all over the country, even some that are seemingly in much better shape than Detroit.

The Obama paradigm of building more entitlements like ObamaCare and throwing federal money at regional problems is based on the liberal assumption that the government piper will never have to be paid.  Democrats have blasted their Republican counterparts as heartless Tea Party extremists and obstructionists for refusing to play along and let the system go on as it has for decades building debts that can’t ever be met.

But unless someone or some group is able to enact real change, Detroit is America’s future, not, as some are telling us, an exception to the rule.
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Link: http://www.commentarymagazine.com/2013/07/19/didnt-obama-already-save-detroit/