Like I said before, Wall Street is to blame for burgeoning "socialism" in America, not dastardly lib'ruls. Greedy, gambling bankers caused this mess, and now primarily state governments, aided by the federal gov't (the lender of last resort), have to deal with the aftermath.
Obama and the Democrats didn't have to do a darn thing, this is happening at the state level all by itself: more Americans are collecting unemployment benefits and food stamps than ever before, and both are managed at the state level.
Live-free-or-die Texas has borrowed $1.6 billion so far from the federal government to pay residents' soaring unemployment benefits.
The much-criticized federal stimulus, by the way, went a long way toward plugging gaps in state budgets. The stimulus was much less effective than it should have been because (1) it was too small, (2) 37 percent of it was tax cuts, (which, oddly, we don't hear anything about from our angry teabagging/GOP friends) and (3) the federal fiscal expansion was matched by states' fiscal contraction, since most of them have passed balanced budget amendments -- making the national stimulus, in effect, much smaller. Automatic state tax increases on business to cover growing unemployment benefits is a result of the states' pay-as-you-go mandate.
If you weigh the states' budget cuts and tax hikes against the federal stimulus's spending and tax cuts, the net effect was about $246 billion pumped into the economy. Good, but not nearly enough. Thanks, Republicans!
Unemployment taxes slam businesses
By Tami Luhby
February 9, 2010 | CNNMoney.com
URL: http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/09/news/economy/unemployment_taxes/index.htm?hpt=Sbin
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