Fiscal 2011 could be hardest yet for states
U.S. states in fiscal 2011 could be facing the worst budget situation since the recession began in 2007, according to a think-tank report released on Tuesday.
States’ cumulative budget shortfall “will likely reach $140 billion in the coming year, the largest shortfall yet in a string of huge annual gaps that date back to the beginning of the recession,” said the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
State and local government spending cuts have been so severe that they reduced the country’s Gross Domestic Product by half of a percentage point in the first quarter, CBPP said, citing the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
The U.S. Congress has considered measures to ameliorate the effects of the deep recession on the states, but fiscal conservatives have raised concerns over adding to the deficit to help states maintain employees and assistance programs. Last week, a measure that would send states additional money for Medicaid, the healthcare program for the poor administered by the states with federal reimbursements, stalled in the Senate.
Read the whole thing here.
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{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Sean… Looks like our state budget here in Idaho will get worse then, although they’re holding town meetings in the Boise area right now for public comment on building more dams. Where is that money supposed to come from I wonder?
On a different topic, I’ve followed your insights and links about the Gulf oil spill with interest, and this morning stumbled across a couple of things in other sources that I thought might be of interest to you. First, did you already mention about Halliburton’s purchase of a major oil spill clean up company just prior to the Deepwater Horizon explosion as covered by Fox business news? http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/markets/industries/energy/halliburton-buy-boots–coots/ In tandem with this piece of news is a rumor that Goldman Sachs simultaneously sold 44% of it’s stake in BP– http://www.morningliberty.com/2010/06/14/halliburton-boots-coots-goldman-sachs-bp-nwo-unholy-alliances-for-profit/ –but I’d like to know more about who the “keen observers on Wall Street” are. Also, the following alert about mystery crop damage through a swathe of the mid south originally comes from Channel 3 news in Memphis Tennessee (there’s a link to the original video in the top of the linked post at http://www.the-peoples-forum.com/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=19289,) It made me think of your earlier embedded video of the oil sheen following heavy rains, although there’s a lot of chatter coming from various sources in Louisiana and Mississippi about toxic elements of Corexit becoming airborne, too.
Just for good measure I thought I’d throw in a link to a must watch video of a Lousiana native, Kindra Arnesan, speaking to a Gulf emergency summit on June 19th. Evidently, she’s had access to a lot of BP’s strategy meetings (god only knows why they let this woman in…she’s way smart and deadly for them) and what she describes is chilling. I feel like everyone in the country should watch this immediately following the evening news to get a better idea of what’s actually happening down in the region. Here’s the link if you have an extra fifteen minutes. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkYJDI8pK9Y&feature=player_embedded#!
Anyway, just wanted to pass this stuff on. I love your blog! Keep up the great work
Dia
Thanks for the kind words and the great links, Dia!
All the best, Sean