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THE COLLINS-NELSON STIMULUS SLASH.
TPMDC brings you the news: The Senate moderate faction wants to slice some $79 billion from the stimulus package. They want to avoid a filibuster by cutting the bill further to reach a total of about $100 billion dollars. While avoiding a filibuster is necessary -- and it remains unclear if Reid has the votes without these cuts -- I'm not sure that this is the right the way to do it; the bill may be passable without subtracting things like $24.8 billion in state stabilization money for education. State aid is absolutely critical to the overarching purpose of this bill -- stimulating the economy -- because it will prevent state governments, which cannot deficit spend, from cutting services and jobs. There are some spending initiatives that represent good public policy goals, like cyber security research, that could be cut from the bill in order to gain votes without compromising its purpose. It's not clear to me whether the Collins-Nelson crew is making these distinctions or just looking for programs that lack a strong constituency. Today's vote on this amendment will be critical to determining the overall direction of the bill and whether or not it passes tomorrow.
UPDATE: Well, that was fast: "Nelson Backing Off Proposed Stimulus Cuts."
-- Tim Fernholz
COMMENTS (3)
I'm just flummoxed. Why is it so impossibly difficult to understand how money spent on education and health is stimulus spending? States are cash-strapped and without aid, there will be drastic cuts made to two essential services that are already stretched to the limit. I work in education and my list of job responsibilities just keeps getting longer while my pay keeps shrinking -- thanks to cuts already made over the last four years. I am now doing full-time work for quarter-time pay -- all because I need the health insurance. This cannot be sustained. I -- and many like me -- need help and we need it now.
Posted by: Laurie | February 5, 2009 2:54 PM
"Education Stabilization" sounds good from the perspective (here, where I live) of a state that is just about to change the law to allow primary and secondary schools to conduct classes just 4 days a week so as to conserve money. The objective here in Washington is to reduce transportation and overhead costs, which of course will only help to compound our local version of the recession.
Of course, this entirely ignores the question of why Washington voters expect to run their schools using an archaic levy system, but that's for another day, when we get around to discussing why there's no such thing as "Free Lunch".
Posted by: Doug Bostrom | February 5, 2009 4:04 PM
Tim:
Now it looks like the disclaimer from Nelson's staff could be meaningless, since they are clearly negotiating a "cut list" that might well resemble what we've all seen.
One very important detail, though: the $24 billion pot of state fiscal stabilization money that's on the hit list is not "education" money; it's really pretty close to general revenue sharing, and just happens to be administered by the Department of Education. It's the only flexible money for states in the whole stimulus package. The separate $15 billion "state inventive grants" money on the hit list is, however, for education.
Posted by: Ed Kilgore | February 5, 2009 7:18 PM