Smacking Around The Unemployed
by digby
Evidently the Austerity Pimps are getting their way. It’s almost impossible to believe they are actually telling us with a straight face that with 10% unemployment, the unemployed are just lazy bastards who refuse to work, but that’s what they’re telling us. Ok. I won’t even get into the insanity of telling the states that they need to pull in their belts when their belts are wrapped around their necks and tightening.
Harry Reid is going to try one more stab at passing the tax extenders/unemployment/aid to states bill. He filed for cloture last night and the vote will be Friday. A Democratic Senate aide tells me that “the outlook is grim” for achieving cloture, even on this drastically curtailed proposal.
The latest compromise raises the current oil spill liability fund tax to 49 cents per barrel from 8 cents. It also includes some spending cuts and pares down proposed Medicaid aid to states struggling to balance their budgets in the face of a slow economy. States are pushing Congress to extend beyond the December expiration date the extra funds for Medicaid that were included in the stimulus plan passed last year. The extension will “help states avoid further layoffs and service cuts that could otherwise slow recovery” from the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, the National Governors Association said in a letter on Tuesday to leaders in the Senate…. Last year’s economic stimulus plan raised federal payments to states by 6.2 percent, with extra money for those with especially high unemployment. States had asked for a six-month extension of the aid, at a cost of about $24 billion. The Senate proposal would continue the aid through June 2011 but gradually lower the amount. Under language proposed on Wednesday, the increase would decline to 3.2 percent in the first three months of 2011 and to 1.2 percent through June. A draft floated on Tuesday had a phase-down to 5.3 percent and then 3.2 percent.
Governors and state legislatures in some 30 states have already budgeted for this funding, a huge portion of most states’ budgets. A KFF report [pdf] last year found that “Medicaid is the second largest line item in state budgets following elementary and secondary education. Presently, 17 percent of state funds are allocated to Medicaid on average and it is the largest source of revenue in the form of federal grant support to each state.”
I’m thinking this is right up there with pulling the inspectors out when they didn’t find any evidence of WMD and then saying we had to invade to find the WMD for sheer “I know you are but what am I” governance.
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