Left and Wrong author: Harold Meyerson
Left and Wrong article: Greece or California: Who’d you rather be?

In the linked article, Harold Meyerson (a left-wing writer for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times) argues that we as a nation need to bail out California, which is beset by budgetary woes, because Europe has decided to give aid to Greece.

What draws progressives to be bailout suckers? Battered-wife syndrome?

How many bailouts must we all suffer before the bailout suckers learn one very simple lesson: if money is obtainable for certain behavior, that behavior will certainly obtain. That is not to say that California wants to default. A bailout does not provide an incentive to default. It removes a disincentive to default.

There are certain economic consequences to a bankrupt California, and California should suffer all of them. Contrary to what Meyerson says, there are very few consequences to those outside of California; no budget cuts, no layoffs, no crowded classrooms. The only serious consequence to the rest of the country is the bailout he proposes.

The rest of the country has no input in the California budgetary or legislative process, nor should it. To invite this by giving them a feather bed invites federal control over California priorities and programs. If we go down that road, Californians (and Texans and Alaskans and Hawaiians) will soon enough have input and control over the budget priorities (and taxes) in my state. After all, Meyerson says we should not give Californians special treatment.

Congress should do the exact opposite of what Meyerson proposes. They should vote on and pass a bipartisan declaration that states that no federal funds will be appropriated to California in the event or anticipation of credit downgrade or default. That will prevent California legislators from kicking the can down the road (to Washington, DC) and force them to make the hard choices they must make … for themselves.