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State Budget Crises: New York, Texas for Starters |
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Last week in Albany, N.Y., in a scene likely to be repeated in state capital after state capital this year, thousands of state workers and their supporters took to the streets to protest proposed massive budget cuts in health care, education and other vital services.
As we reported last month, nearly every state faces billions of dollars in deficits because of the belly-up economy. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that for the remainder of fiscal year 2009, plus 2010 and 2011, 44 states face a total estimated deficit of $350 billion.
That means states are faced with the tough choices of cutting vital services, laying off workers or raising taxes.
In Albany, the members of AFSCME District Council 37 (DC37), the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA)/AFSCME Local 1000), the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) and other unions told Gov. David Paterson (D) he’s made the wrong choices in his proposed budget. Those choices will place communities, jobs and services—especially schools and hospitals—at unnecessary risk.
The workers rallied under the banner “March for Main Street,” and CSEA President Danny Donahue told the crowd:
All working New Yorkers live on “Main Street” and it’s time for all of us to stand up and say no to proposals that will have us pay more and get less while the wealthiest New Yorkers slide by.
Paterson’s fiscal 2010 budget would disproportionately hurt middle-class families by imposing $9 billion in cuts to many state services, including education and health care programs. It also would increase college tuition, charge state employees more for their health insurance, close and downsize youth facilities and cut aid to local governments.
Said Lillian Roberts, DC 37 executive director:
The governor’s budget cuts are unfair, unjust and unwise. His proposal to slash funds for health care, education and other social safety net services endangers the lives of those who need them and the jobs of workers who provide them.
Meanwhile in Texas, the state’s unemployment offices are so overwhelmed with applicants, the Texas Workforce Commission (TWC) is urging applicants to apply online instead of calling TWC offices.
Ed Sills, Texas AFL-CIO communications director, says this could be the start of some serious trouble—including the rapid shrinking of the unemployment insurance fund. In a recent edition of his Texas AFL-CIO News, an e-newsletter, Sills writes:
A year ago, Perry and the Texas Association of Business were bragging that the Texas economy was so good that they could afford to suspend employer payments to the unemployment insurance (UI) fund. (The commissioner representing employees—our friend, Ronnie Congleton—was the dissenter in that 2-1 vote.) Other states are already reporting massive deficits in their UI funds. The other shoe on Perry’s politicized and ideological treatment of jobless benefits is leaning over the roof at a nearby building, poised on the precipice, waiting for the cat to nudge it.
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I wonder how much money from all these state budgets has gone to fund services for illegal aliens.How many tax dollars could have gone to the legal citizens of this country that can’t seem to get any help from anyone in government.I don’t know about the rest of you but I’m really sick of paying taxes and someone else getting most of the benefits.I’ve been on unemployment benefits while illegal aliens did my job at less than half my wages and my tax dollars go to pay for many benefits going to them.I’m all for legal immigration but I want the government to enforce all the laws of this country and that includes immigration laws.We have massive unemployment and it gets worse every week.So it sounds like a good idea to me to give about 20 some million illegals a free pass to citizenship.
“The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) estimates that for the remainder of fiscal year 2009, plus 2010 and 2011, 44 states face a total estimated deficit of $350 billion.”
Guess who is going to get that $350 billion? Not the bankrupt states to fund unemployment insurance, maintain public education, health care, etc. the essentials for survival of working people nationwide!
Obama, Bush team up behind another $350 billion for the banks
14 January 2009
Barry Grey
“First things first. Even before President Bush makes his farewell address on Thursday and Barack Obama is sworn in as the 44th president next Tuesday, the outgoing and incoming administrations are engaged in a concerted drive to release the second $350 billion installment of taxpayer funds to bail out the banks.”
…
One day before Obama requested $350 billion more for the banks, he explicitly affirmed that his administration would seek to impose major funding cuts and structural “reforms” on the bedrock social programs—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid—upon which tens of millions of workers and retirees depend. In an interview on the ABC News “This Week” program, Obama was asked whether he would carry out “entitlement reform, including Social Security and Medicare, where everybody in the country is going to have to sacrifice.”
Read the full article at WSWS using this link.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/jan2009/pers-j14.shtml
It is past time for the organized labor movement and working people to form
a new anti-capitalist socialist political party independent of both Democratic and Republican parties to represent the economic needs of working people
A new national media, a new voice of working people is needed! With programs on TV and radio, the new media must re-educate us all to end the corrupt capitalist economy! Capitalism is destroying all working people in this country and worldwide! This “fact of life” is NEVER allowed mention on corporate controlled mass media.
Wall Street, the banks, the military-industrial complex (military budget is taking over one-half the budget!) forever waging wars for profit! Corpoate capitalism does not give a damn about the working people (called “human resources”) in this country or around the world.
If these states want to overcome their budget problems the first step they need to take is to stop allowing illegals to take advantage of services and programs intended for LEGAL residents! Anyone in this country illegally should not be entitled to any public service including but not limited to ‘free’ healthcare (they use emergency room services and never pay the bill) and public education. Cut out the ‘freebies’ for the illegals and these states could save millions of dollars a year!
To Amnesty:
1. The “illegals” have often been here for years working at the worst jobs that “legals” could not afford to take.
2. Mexican “illegals” in particular have been forced by U.S. corporations, getting subsidies from U.S. government, then dump
cheap corn in Mexico. driving subsistence peasants off the land,
and north.
3. Many tragedies are taking place destroying hard working
immigrants not for any crime but some legalisms used by U.S.
employers to further exploit these unprotected peoples.