City run by Democrats for Decades Detroit Files for Biggest Municipal Bankruptcy in U.S. History $18 Billion

Before an analysis can be made as to how the city of Detroit got to such a horrific fiscal situation, one has to look at who’s been running the city for many years.  Detroit, along with other urban centers has been run by the Democrat party for years.  Thanks to one party government that was only too happy to make sweetheart deals with public sector unions has gotten this once great city to this point.  The same can be said for the state of California and New York also dominated by the Democrat party and also teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.   

All Democrats know how to do is tax and spend cities and states into financial oblivion.  For Detroit, it’s time to pay the Piper, but they don’t have the money to do it. 

The New YorkTimes reports Detroit, the cradle of America’s automobile industry and once the nation’s fourth-most-populous city, has filed for bankruptcy, an official said Thursday afternoon, the largest American city ever to take such a course.

The decision to turn to the federal courts, which required approval from both the emergency manager assigned to oversee the troubled city and from Gov. Rick Snyder, is also the largest municipal bankruptcy filing in American history in terms of debt.

Not everyone agrees how much Detroit owes, but Kevyn D. Orr, the emergency manager who was appointed by Mr. Snyder to resolve the city’s financial problems, has said the debt is likely to be $18 billion and perhaps as much as $20 billion.

For Detroit, the filing comes as a painful reminder of a city’s rise and fall. 

Founded more than 300 years ago, the city expanded at a stunning rate in the first half of the 20th century with the arrival of the automobile industry, and then shrank away in recent decades at a similarly remarkable pace. A city of 1.8 million in 1950, it is now home to 700,000 people, as well as to tens of thousands of abandoned buildings, vacant lots and unlit streets. 

From here, there is no road map for Detroit’s recovery, not least of all because municipal bankruptcies are rare. Some bankruptcy experts and city leaders bemoaned the likely fallout from the filing, including the stigma it would carry. They anticipate further benefit cuts for city workers and retirees, more reductions in services for residents, and a detrimental effect on future borrowing. 

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