Michael Barone‘s latest analysis for the Washington Examiner suggests “voters in big state prefer skinflint candidates.”
It’s a poorly kept secret that government is growing not only at the federal, but also at the state and local levels. Especially in some of the biggest states, public employee unions have successfully pressed for higher pay and lavish pensions (one Illinois school superintendent’s pension is valued at $26 million) to the point that public employees’ salaries and benefits are higher than those of the private sector taxpayers who pay for them.
So while 8 million private sector jobs have disappeared, the number of public sector job losses is near zero.
Barack Obama’s solution is to send borrowed federal dollars — one-third of the $862 billion stimulus package last year and now a proposal for another $23 billion for teachers — to states and localities to prop up the pay of unionized public employees. One reason: unions gave Obama and the Democrats $400 million in the 2008 cycle.
State governors can’t resort to deficit spending without risky gimmicks, and what’s more, … voters don’t want them to.
As a result, Republicans are leading or running even in governor races in seven of the eight largest states.
