State, Local Governments Are Posting Surprisingly Sunny Revenue Projections. Democrats Want To Give Them $350 Billion Anyway – By Christian Britschgi (Reason) / Feb 12 2021
Most states managed to avoid much-predicted fiscal crises during the pandemic. Congress wants to shower them with more federal aid anyway.
Dire predictions about state budget woes turned out to be much too gloomy. Despite this, Democrats in Congress and the White House want to send the states billions more in federal aid.
Today, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is set to mark up the $350 billion in state and local aid included in the $1.9 trillion relief package being pushed by President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats.
The plan, according to a one-pager released by the committee earlier this week, is to spend $195 billion on aid to state governments, and another $130 billion on counties and cities. The other $25 billion would be split between territories and tribal governments.
Most of the money reserved for state governments under this plan will be doled out based on each state’s number of jobless workers. Each state is still supposed to get a minimum of $500 million from the feds.
