There’s something delicious about the People’s Daily, the venerable newspaper of the Chinese Communists, quoting the Heritage Foundation’s Brian Riedl in a story about the profligate spending and impending budget woes of American’s states and localities. From the lede:

In spite of indicators suggesting the United States is pulling out of the worst recession since the 1930s — albeit at a snail’s pace — state and local governments are likely to lag behind the national recovery and face financial pressures for some time, experts said.
But the extent to which this will occur varies from city to city. While Harrisburg, Pennsylvania officials have talked of declaring bankruptcy, observers speculate more such cases could follow.

This is not just a short-run fiscal problem, by the way. The Pew Center on the States released a recent report showing that state pension funds had a total unfunded liability of about $1 trillion at the end of fiscal 2008 – before the late unpleasantness set in. You can go here to look up the unfunded liability in your state. And for more on the immediate crisis, check out Governing magazine’s cover story from a couple of months ago on state budget gaps and legislative responses.