Detroit Bailout? ‘Over My Dead Body’ Says Rand Paul

If Detroit wants some bailout money, they’ll have to pry it from Rand Paul’s cold, dead fingers. Okay, so we’re mixing political metaphors again, but the Kentucky senator says that a solution to the Motor City’s financial woes won’t be coming from the government if he has anything to say about it.

This week, Detroit filed for bankruptcy protection, mounting a historic effort to bail out the city that is sinking under billions of dollars in debt due to decades of poor management. The Chapter 9 filing isn’t the first, but Detroit is certainly the largest city in U.S. history to do so.

While the fed hasn’t said anything definitive about its plans to help the ailing city yet, Rand Paul said in an interview with Breitbart.com that he’ll do everything in his power to prevent President Barack Obama from bailing out the city.

Paul says that Detroit needs to save itself and learn from its fiscal mistakes. “I basically say he [Obama] is baling them out over my dead body because we don’t have any money in Washington.”

Paul says that good things can come out of bankruptcy. By being forgiven of its debt, Detroit has an oppoetunity to start over with new and “better” management and unaffordable contracts “where public employees are getting paid twice what private employees.”

He also says that if President Obama makes moves to bail out Detroit, it will send a message to other cities that they can continue to conduct poor management and reckless spending because the government will bail them out if they get into trouble.

“Those who don’t have their house in order, who are teetering on disaster, will continue to make bad decisions. And by the way these [local and state budget choices] are tough decisions. I’m not saying they are all prescient and that it will be easy on everybody who works for the city or the state, but you need to make these decisions and the sooner you make them the better. If you wait to make them, it’s even harder on people.”

The White House has said that it is monitoring the situation in Detroit, but that they haven’t decided on whether or not to bail out the city. However, Obama’s former adviser Steven Rattner told MSNBC that President Obama should bail the city out. Paul said that Obama is “making indications that Detroit can be expected to be bailed out.”

Do you think that the federal government should grant Detroit’s bailout request?

[Image: Gage Skidmore]