In a less than $2 trillion budget world at the state level.
Because of promises to pay for pensions and healthcare for retired public employees out of future tax revenues, the big squeeze is on, according to Steven Malanga, here:
From 2008 through 2010 (the latest year data are available), state spending rose to $1.9 trillion, from $1.7 trillion. ...
Several years ago, for instance, the treasurer of Cook County, Ill., Maria Pappas, demanded that all of Cook's municipalities report their debt to her. It wasn't easy. They began with bonded debt, then totaled up pension liabilities, then found they had lots more they'd promised to workers for health care. ...
We couldn't get a handle on just how much debt states and their municipalities have accumulated unless every county treasurer does what Pappas did. But just what we can estimate in bonded debt and unfunded pension and health care promises for retirees now totals about $8 trillion. That's a lot of future state and municipal tax revenues already accounted for.
What's that familiar refrain we keep hearing at the federal level, that a present Congress can't bind a future one?
So how can present municipal and county governments bind the taxpayers to pay in future for unfunded promises in the present, huh?
