California's Cruel Austerity Program

A California appeals court has upheld an Order by Gov. Arnold Schwarzennager temporarily cutting state employees back to the federal minimum wage since the California legislature has not passed a budget and is facing a $19 billion annual deficit. (Unfortunately for the Governor, all that spending has not produced a computer system capable of changing the remuneration of State employees in this way).

And "in Illinois, the state simply has stopped paying bills".

The path of big government and the welfare state is the path to broken promises and inter-generational warfare. The workers in California and vendors in Illinois are paying the price for the unsustainable public sector union contracts which preceded them, sometimes by decades.

Yet those of us who call for fiscal sanity and reform are derided by people like Sheldon Whitehouse and other Democrats as having no compassion.

Just the opposite is true.

It's called tough love. Those who feed the big government addiction are the cruel ones.

Not intentionally cruel, of course.