Be sure to catch George Will’s Washington Post piece on the coming battle in the new Congress over state and local public pensions.   In early December, we posted the report by James Pethokoukis of a secret Republican plan to push states into bankruptcy as a way to force them to address their underfunded pension liabilities.    Will writes,

Principal author of the Public Employee Pension Transparency Act is Rep. Devin Nunes, a Republican from California, where about 80 cents of every government dollar goes for government employees’ pay and benefits. His bill would define the scale of the problem of underfunded state and local government pensions and would notify states not to approach Congress like Oliver Twists, holding out porridge bowls and asking for more…

There are legal provisions for municipalities to declare bankruptcy. Some have done so. As many as 200 are expected to default on debt next year. There are, however, no bankruptcy provisions for states. Some who favor providing such provisions say states are “too big to fail,” and under bankruptcy, judges could rewrite union contracts or give states powers to do so, thereby reducing existing pension obligations. Unfortunately, government-administered bankruptcy of governments might be even more unseemly than Washington’s political twisting of the bankruptcy process on behalf of General Motors and Chrysler, including the use of TARP funds supposedly restricted for “financial institutions.”…People seeking backdoor bailouts hope that the fourth branch of government, a.k.a. Ben Bernanke, will declare an emergency power for the Federal Reserve to buy municipal bonds to lower localities’ borrowing costs. This political act might mitigate one crisis by creating a larger one – the Fed’s forfeiture of its independence.

This is going to be big next year.  Keep it on your radar.