In a Bad State

David Schleicher is the ideal legal scholar of cities. Anyone who is worried about the fiscal future of our states and local governments should read his insightful new book. It is remarkably deep given how much fun it is to read, and it is remarkably fun to read given the seriousness of the topic. * Edward Glaeser, Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics and Chairman of the Department of Economics, Harvard University * Faced with mounting Medicaid costs, footloose taxpayers, powerful public employees, and a nationalized political climate that rewards ideological grandstanding over basic competence, America's state governments have become fiscal basket cases. Confident that they'll be bailed out by the federal government at the first sign of economic distress, elected officials in state after state are choosing budget gimmickry over spending discipline, reaping political dividends all the while. But what happens when the bailout doesn't materialize, or isn't quite as generous as expected? Drawing on the history of federal responses to state fiscal disasters from the 1790s to the Covid pandemic, David Schleicher's In a Bad State offers a brilliant and engaging exposition of exactly why these fiscal reckonings have proven so painful in the past, and why the inevitable next one will be no exception. * Reihan Salam, Manhattan Institute * David Schleicher, the leading lawyer on state and city governments, has written an extraordinary book that describes with incredible clarity the complexity of the fiscal decisions that lie ahead for cities and states. It is well worth reading. * Richard Ravitch, Former Lt. Governor of New York and Chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Authority * David Schleicher, one of the most brilliant and far-ranging political thinkers of his generation, here takes on a very specific question: How federal governments should respond when state and local governments default. Schleicher's timely insight is that overspending is inextricable from the question of growth, and In a Bad State's deft history channels all the ways in which federalism has complicated and shaped the efforts to build a bigger and more modern country. The pragmatic question with which this gem-like policy book begins opens into a literary one: Of how existing legal and policy regimes might be bent in order to account for the future. * Benjamin Wallace-Wells, The New Yorker *