Politics & Power Quote by Dennis Hastert

The line reads like budget-speak, but it’s really a moral argument dressed in fiscal clothing. Hastert is drawing a bright line between “commitment” and “walk away,” framing corporate cost-shifting not as clever accounting but as a breach of character. The key move is the double-stitching of blame: first on companies that made “legacy” promises (think pensions, retiree health care, union-era obligations), then on the federal government as the unwilling dumping ground. In that construction, Washington isn’t the hero swooping in to stabilize markets; it’s the sucker left holding the bag.

“Legacy costs” is doing heavy rhetorical lifting. It’s a technocratic euphemism that softens what’s actually at stake: workers paid in deferred guarantees now being told the guarantees are optional. By choosing that term, Hastert signals fluency in the language of business and policy, inviting corporate America to feel understood while still scolding it for trying to socialize its liabilities.

The subtext is also about discipline and precedent. If the government backstops private promises, it quietly encourages more private risk-taking and thinner corporate responsibility. Calling it “a fiscal problem for us” translates an ethical complaint into the only language Congress reliably treats as urgent: the deficit and taxpayer exposure. It’s an attempt to make reneging on obligations politically radioactive, not because it’s unfair in the abstract, but because it becomes an invoice sent to everyone.