Refusing to Tax the Rich Has Bankrupted Kentucky
Negative credit rating. Negative. That's economic disaster territory.
Bevin refused to do anything about it during the 2016 budget session. Now he and his all-repug legislature can't do anything about it until next year. Meanwhile, Kentucky's sliding down the shitter.
John Cheves at the Herald:
A credit ratings agency fired a warning shot this week over Kentucky’s $32.6 billion public pension debt.Yes, the pension shortfall is the result of decades of administrations, mostly Democratic, stealing from the pension plan in order to fill budget holes without raising taxes.
Standard and Poor’s Global Ratings revised its outlook on Kentucky on Wednesday, from stable to negative, ahead of an upcoming state bond sale. The lowered outlook reflects at least a one-in-three likelihood that S&P will lower the state’s credit ratings during the next two years, making it more expensive for the state to borrow money, the agency said in a statement.
“The outlook revision reflects our view that funding levels of the commonwealth’s pension plans could significantly weaken and associated fixed costs could continue to rise to a level that might significantly pressure budgetary performance and flexibility,” S&P analyst Timothy Little said.
But it's repugs whose whole raison d'etre is No Taxes. Now that they have control of all of Kentucky state government, they'll eliminate the pension system all together before they'll make the rich pay a fraction of their fair share of the taxes that hold the Commonwealth together.
Fine with you? State worker pensions are a significant source of income and economic growth in this state. Cancel that system and suddenly billions of dollars in consumer spending vanishes. Then the real budget slashing starts.
And then we're Somalia.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment