Belly Up: 10 States Face Imminent Bankruptcy

Ten states are facing imminent bankruptcy, confounding any possibility of economic recovery as tax revenues continue to decline and unemployment increases nationwide, Jerome Corsi's Red Alert reports.

Those states in fiscal peril include California, Arizona, Rhode Island, Michigan, Oregon, Nevada, Florida, New Jersey, Illinois and Wisconsin.

The National Governor's Association has reported state revenues across the nation were down 11.7 and 16.6 percent in the first two quarters of 2009, respectively.

The study further observed that state revenues will not return to 2008 levels in real dollar terms until fiscal year 2014, under the most favorable assumptions that the economy has already begun a slow and largely jobless recovery.

Red Alert reports that among the most severe problems facing the states is the outstanding liability of about $2.73 trillion in employee retirement, health and other benefits coming due over the next several decades, of which more than $271 billion is unfunded.

The National Governor's Association presented the reality that "it will take states nearly a decade to fully emerge from the current recession."

"The truth is that the recovery period could be even longer if the bankruptcy and unemployment picture does not improve," Corsi wrote.

Just last week, Red Alert reported that the real unemployment number, including those who have dropped out of the labor force because they have become discouraged after looking for a job for a year or longer, was 22.1 percent for October 2009, not the 10.2 percent reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

As Red Alert has reported, Tom Blumer at NewsBusters has produced statistics that show California is in a welfare crisis, especially as unemployment in May rose to 11.5 percent.

Blumer produced charts to demonstrate that California has "chronically failed to do anything meaningful about its welfare population since 2002."

California may have to consider ending state welfare altogether, stopping CalWORKs, the California state version of comprehensive welfare reform under the 1996 Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF law.

"Perhaps not surprisingly, among all the proposals to balance California's budget, the politically correct state has yet to consider cutting social welfare benefits for illegal immigrants, including education of children in Spanish in the public schools or restricting access to hospital emergency rooms for non-emergency primary health-care services," he wrote. "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is likely to sell high profile state property such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and San Quentin prison before tackling the politically charged issue of controlling the flood of illegal immigrants that continue to head north into California from Mexico."

WND columnist Ben Shapiro has estimated that education and health costs for illegal immigrants compose between 16.4 and 20.5 percent of California's budget deficit.

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