Help!
Top leaders of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. union on Thursday called on President Obama and Congress to help bankrupt Detroit with some cash, The New York Times reports.
“There is no question there’s a crisis in Detroit, but impoverishing the city’s public service workers and further decimating public services is not the solution,” said Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and chairman of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Political Committee. “The whole country is watching how this crisis gets resolved. As the nation emerges from the worst of the Great Recession, it is time for Congress and the White House to make it clear they will not turn their backs on our urban centers.”
The executive council of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, at meetings at its D.C. headquarters, also called on state of Michigan to provide a comparable amount of financial support to Detroit, The Times reports.
So far, state and federal authorities have done nothing to indicate that they'd like to bail out Detroit. The White House last week indicated it had no plans to step up and help.
Monica Davey of The Times writes:
State and federal authorities have largely set aside suggestions of a bailout in the days since Gov. Rick Snyder and the emergency manager he assigned to solve Detroit’s woes announced that the city required bankruptcy protection. But the appeal on Thursday by labor leaders, who were angered by the prospect of cuts to pensions and health benefits to help resolve the city’s $18 billion debt, suggests that questions about state and federal support for teetering cities like Detroit are far from over.
