I thought Chafee is someone who lives by his campaign promises. Let me quote:

http://newsblog.projo.com/2010/01/chafee-announcing-governor-run.html
"There are three keys to dealing with Rhode Island's budget woes.

"First: the state must control government spending and be more efficient....
"Third: I want to generate new state revenue from economic growth, not by raising taxes and fees.

---------------

Same exact quotes from his own web site:
http://www.chafeeforgovernor.com/2010/01/why_i_want_to_s.php

I wish I had time to dig through the WPRI Newsmakers videos, as I'm pretty sure I remember Chafee getting grilled on this, only to answer that he will not raise taxes until we have spending under control first.

So why does Chafee have to keep some campaign promises and not others?

"Those who believe that the healthiest outcome for Rhode Island would be a hastening of its demise (and therefore, its recovery) may soon get their wish."

Unfortunately there is no "death". Just a slow, painful grinding away at working people to the benefit of the cronies, illegal aliens, welfare parasites and public unions.
Look at Deeeetroit, Newark, Hartford, Caifoooornia, etc.
But you know what? we as much as the fools in those places, deserve EXACTLY what we get.

Although if this ever passes all bets are off...

November 29, 2010
For Tottering States, Bankruptcy Could Be the Answer
By Michael Barone

We won't be able to say we weren't warned. Continued huge federal budget deficits will eventually mean huge increases in government borrowing costs, Erskine Bowles, co-chairman of Barack Obama's deficit reduction commission, predicted this month. "The markets will come. They will be swift, and they will be severe, and this country will never be the same."

Bowles is talking about what the business press calls bond market vigilantes. People with capital are currently willing to loan money to the federal government, by buying U.S. bonds at low interest rates. That's because interest rates are generally low and because Treasury bonds are regarded as the safest investment in the world.

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But what if they aren't? What if investors suddenly perceive a higher risk and demand a higher return? That's what Bowles is talking about, and there are signs it may be starting to happen. The Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing -- QE2 -- was intended to lower the interest rate on long-term bonds. Instead, the rate has been going up.

The federal government still seems a long way from the disaster Bowles envisions. But some state governments aren't.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger came to Washington earlier this year to get $7 billion for his state government, which resorted to paying off vendors with scrip and delaying state income tax refunds. Illinois seems to be in even worse shape. A recent credit rating showed it weaker than Iceland and only slightly stronger than Iraq.

It's no mystery why these state governments -- and those of New York and New Jersey, as well -- are in such bad fiscal shape. These are the parts of America where the public employee unions have been calling the shots, insisting on expanded payrolls, ever higher pay, hugely generous fringe benefits and utterly unsustainable pension promises.

The prospect is that the bond market will quit financing California and Illinois long before the federal government. It may already be happening. Earlier this month, California could sell only $6 billion of $10 billion revenue anticipation notes it put on the market.

Individual investors have been selling off state and local municipal bonds this month. Meredith Whitney, the financial expert who first spotted Citigroup's overexposure to mortgage-backed securities, is now predicting a sell-off in the municipal bond market.

So it's entirely possible that some state government -- California and Illinois, facing $25 billion and $15 billion deficits, are likely suspects -- will be coming to Washington some time in the next two years in search of a bailout. The Obama administration may be sympathetic. It's channeled stimulus money to states and TARP money to General Motors and Chrysler in large part to bail out its labor union allies.

But the Republican House is not likely to share that view, and it's hard to see how tapped-out state governments can get 60 votes in a 53-47 Democratic Senate.

How to avoid this scenario? University of Pennsylvania law professor David Skeel, writing in The Weekly Standard, suggests that Congress pass a law allowing states to go bankrupt.

Skeel, a bankruptcy expert, notes that a Depression-era statute allows local governments to go into bankruptcy. Some have done so: Orange County, Calif., in 1994, Vallejo, Calif., in 2008. Others -- perhaps a dozen small municipalities in Michigan -- are headed that way.

A state bankruptcy law would not let creditors thrust a state into bankruptcy -- that would violate state sovereignty. But it would allow a state government going into bankruptcy to force a "cram down," imposing a haircut on bondholders, and to rewrite its union contracts.

The threat of bankruptcy would put a powerful weapon in the hands of governors and legislatures: They can tell their unions that they have to accept cuts now or face a much more dire fate in bankruptcy court.

It's not clear that governors like California's Jerry Brown, who first authorized public employee unions in the 1970s, or Illinois's Pat Quinn will be eager to use such a threat against unions, which have been the Democratic Party's longtime allies and financiers.

But the bond market could force their hand and seems already to be pushing in that direction. And, as Bowles notes, when the markets come, they will be swift and severe.

The policy arguments for a bailout of California or Illinois public employee union members are incredibly weak. If Congress allows state bankruptcies, it might prevent a crisis that is plainly looming.