From the department of truth is stranger than fiction, locals celebrated over the weekend the emergence of Johnstown from financially distressed Act 47 status, which was followed up quickly on Monday by the United States moving ahead its timetable for potential debt-ceiling-induced default to early June.
To repeat, Johnstown, which has spent the past three decades and change living a Blanche DuBois existence — depending on the kindness of strangers — is supposed to be back in good fiscal health.
Never mind that a couple of sidebar stories to this Act 47 exit are that Johnstown ranks 194 of 206 small metropolitan areas nationally in terms of economic output and 341 of all 357 U.S. metropolitan areas in that economic category. Also, please disregard a $1 million anticipated loss in tax revenue as a result of add-on taxes, allowed to be charged by Act 47 municipalities that now must go away.
Johnstown looks more like an economic cadaver than a vital life form. But we’re no longer on the Act 47 shame list. And, of course, the tourism wave hasn’t kicked in fully yet.
Meanwhile, the aptly named Janet “Yellin’” Yellen told Congress Monday that despite the ongoing fiscal sleights of hand being practiced, the date for the federal government running out of money to pay obligations looms as early as June 1.
Yellen, our Mother Hubbard of monetary and fiscal policy, formerly served as chair of the Federal Reserve, which manages the nation’s money supply. These days, she cashes a check as Treasury Secretary, where her job is to make sure all of Clueless Joe Biden’s green initiatives and handouts to Ukraine are funded, not to mention such niggling details as paying Social Security benefits and interest on the burgeoning national debt, currently at roughly $31.5 trillion.
Mayday. Mayday. Mayday.
It is ironic that Yellen presided over loose monetary policies and artificially depressed interest rates as Fed chair, which helped get us into this fiscal mess. Now, she’s being forced to deal with the crisis she had a large hand in creating.
Too bad Act 47 status isn’t an option for the U.S., in which we’d expect the rest of the world to spend the next 30 years, give or take, bailing us out for our mismanagement.
House Republicans have passed a plan to increase the debt limit, but with accompanying demands for cuts in funding for Biden’s pet left-wing agenda items such as canceling student loan debt, giving blank checks to environmental crazies and turning the IRS into an armed branch of the secret police.
Biden’s handlers have vowed to paint the Republican plan as cutting veterans benefits and slicing border enforcement. It’s ridiculous but, considering the general idiocy of the electorate, it might work.
This federal debt problem has ripple effects for states and various municipalities in that it puts a crimp in handouts from Uncle Sam, said handouts being generally counted on to plug fiscal holes, sort of like individuals borrowing from the in-laws.
Based on past shortages of will, we would expect the U.S. debt ceiling to be booted upward with a last-minute deal. The over-under for that probably is Memorial Day.
Then we can begin counting the days until Johnstown once again slips beneath the fiscal waves and returns to the Davey Jones’s locker of Act 47. But the rules have changed, and three-plus decade stays there no longer are tolerated.
No sweat. By then, the raging success of Myopia 2025’s revitalization plan for the area should make any distressed status short-lived. Or not.
Sam Ross Jr's site 