Last week I told you about Pennsylvania Democrat Senator Bob Casey's legislation for a $165 billion bailout of union pension funds. Looks like that legislation will come into play as soon as this week. What Casey wants to do is to take unfunded union pension liabilities - promises that they've made to employees that they can't afford to actually keep - and transfer these liabilities to the Pension Benefit Guarantee Program. What does that mean? It means that all of these unfunded pension liabilities will become the burden of the American taxpayer. It could mean an excess of $165 billion on the taxpayer, but the liability is essentially unlimited because you must honor them until workers die --- and we all know that ObamaCare is going to extend all of our lives, right? What's the chance that the taxpayers would actually be on the hook? Well back in 2006 (before the financial markets tanked), only 6% of union pension funds were doing well. So I can only imagine that that figure hasn't gotten any better.

A hearing is scheduled for this Thursday to see where politicians sit on the issue .. find out if lawmakers believe that union pensions are "too big to fail" and in need of rescuing.

While we are the subject of unions, did you happen to catch this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal written by a teacher's union boss? The writer is Randi Weingarten and she says that our government schools need a bailout! Although, she doesn't call them "government" schools, even though that is exactly what they are - owned, staffed and operated by the government. Randi Weingarten says:

"The federal government didn't let Wall Street fail. Why would we do less for our public schools, which undeniably are too important to fail? ... provide a $23 billion infusion to states to avert educational and economic disaster... the Keep Our Educators Working Act... President Obama has thrown his support behind this emergency legislation.

And there is no doubt that this is an emergency. School districts finalizing their 2010-11 budgets are making tough decisions right now about drastic steps such as whether to cancel summer school, shift to a four-day school week, or issue layoff notices to teachers."

I can't see worrying all that much about the collapse of a system - our government schools - that bear so much of the responsibility of the decline of our country. And yes ... I'm serious about this. I can't think of a government institution that I dislike more than our government schools. They're hideous and destructive.

But here we go again with the left creating a crisis - an emergency! - that government must then swoop in and fix. The problem is that you can't fix something for free, and our federal government is broke.