To the Editor:
Re “Let
Treasury Rescue the States” (Op-Ed, July 8):
Christopher Edley Jr. suggests that Washington help state governments
with their deficits by letting them borrow against future-year federal
payments for entitlement programs like Medicaid.
But states have borrowed from the future for decades. To finance
unsustainable public-labor, education and health care spending, states
have shortchanged investment in roads, flood protection and transit, at
the cost of future economic growth. They’ve also made pension promises
and taken on debt without putting aside money to pay.
Washington should not offer more borrowed funds to maintain this
impossible status quo. Instead, Washington should help only the states
that enact laws or agreements now to freeze public-sector wages and cut
future public-sector retiree benefits.
Washington should require the states to spend 80 percent of this “cash
for cuts” money on infrastructure. Such a stimulus would begin to
reverse the imbalance between spending and investment that thwarts
recovery.
Nicole Gelinas
Senior Fellow, Manhattan Institute
New York, July 8, 2010
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 