States Scramble to Repay Feds for Unemployment Insurance LoansPlus Interest

States Raise Payroll Taxes to Repay Unemployment Insurance Loans
Don’t you love this razzle dazzle the Feds pulled? This is an Insurance plan paid by the employer, not a government program. Of course the employer was going to have to pay for the extension of benefits sooner or later. Just like any other Insurance plan. Why can’t someone please just be honest about they are about? But then again, they may not even know. State Governments are borrowing heavily from the Federal Government to keep paying Unemployment-insurance benefits and, even with ...

Whither Go the BABs?
Without an extension by the end of December, the 2 year old Build America Bond (BAB) program will expire. As of this writing, both the Senate and House tax bills failed to include BABs as part of their packages. The program, which was birthed as part of the stimulus package, authorizes state and local governments to issue these bonds to finance pretty much any kind of infrastructure project. They are different from standard municipal bonds in that the interest earned is taxable as opposed to ta...

Michigan the only state of the union to see a decrease in population
according to CNBC, reporting a few minutes ago on the Census Bureau's population report. Michigan will discover that as a result of a depressed economy and a Manufacturing industry that has been dealt a death blow over the last ten years a large percentage of Michigan’s population has relocated to other parts of the country. Michigan is most certainly to lose one Congressional Seat, if not two. It also means that Michigan is also apt to lose Federal Funding. At the other extreme is D...

Japan forecasts GDP growth to slow in 2011
The pace of Japan's Economic Growth will halve in fiscal 2011 from this year as a stimulus-driven shopping rush eases and exports fall on a strong yen and softer demand, the government said Wednesday. In its outlook report, the Cabinet Office also said consumer prices will stop falling but will not rise, dealing a blow to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's stated goal of ending Deflation in the year. Recent year-on-year falls in the Consumer Price Index will halt in the middle of next year, the Cabinet ...

Fears grow of euro-style debt crisis in US states
No sooner has the last crisis ended, than warnings about the next one begin. In the dying days of the year, with the sub-prime Mortgage debacle entering the rear-view mirror, economy-watchers are warning 2011 could see US states and municipalities plunge into a Debt crisis of that type that has wrought chaos in Europe. Although the US economy is slowly getting to its feet after a brutal Recession, state and local Budgets are still prostrate. To the west, California faces a budget shortfall of ov...

2010 Census Moving Six Electoral Votes from Blue States to Red States Video 12/22/10
Multisource political news, world news, and entertainment news analysis by Newsy.com Here is a video recap on the results of the 2010 Census and how it might impact future Presidential Elections. The changes in population are moving six Congressional Seats, and thus Electoral Votes, from Blue States to Red States. That could be very significant in a close Presidential Election. However, some of the population change is a result of increased Hispanic populations in Texas and Arizona, and it is ...

Stop panicking over muni defaults!
Meredith Whitney is raising the alarm on the fiscal imbalances at the state and municipal level, which is sending muni bond investors into a panic. But the fear of sweeping defaults is far overblown. Meredith Whitney sees doomsday ahead. In the past two months, the $2.8 Trillion municipal Bond Market has gone from being one of the most boring and predictable markets to one of the most volatile and talked about – it even made it onto 60 Minutes this week. But the recent selloff in this nor...

A Couple Thoughts About the Census
The Census Bureau released the results of the 2010 ennumeration and, from a political point of view, the GOP have to be pretty happy about the direction in which the population is moving. Seven states that voted Republican in the past three Presidential Election picked up House seats and five that did not lost seats. The biggest winner in that regard was Texas, which picked up four House seats. As Ed Morrissey notes, the big GOP gains will be important in next year’s reapportionment fights...

Rell, Democrats battle over budget to the end
The dysfunctional relationship between Gov. M. Jodi Rell and the Democrat-controlled General Assembly regarding their Joint Custody of the state Budget is ending the way it began two years ago - with mutual charges of irresponsibility. The Governor's Budget office used it's the final monthly Budget projection of the administration this week to blast new legislative recommendations to streamline state spending, calling the savings target "unrealistic" and charging that it regurgitates ideas her...

Deep-'seated' trouble
WASHINGTON -- The big loser in the 2010 Census is New York state, which will lose two seats in the House of Representatives to faster-growing Southern and Western states where residents are being lured by lower taxes and warmer weather. Only Ohio lost as many representatives -- a perilous loss of political clout and Federal Aid as the muscle in Congress shifts dramatically from mostly Democratic northern states to Republican bastions like Texas, which will pick up four Congressional Seats. M...

32 states borrow billions from feds to cover unemployment benefits...
BY MALIA ZIMMERMAN - Hawaii has applied to be the 32nd state to borrow from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment and Training Administration to pay state Unemployment Benefits. Hawaii will temporarily take up to $30 million this December to cover payments to the state’s 17,000 unemployed workers who lost their jobs within the last 26 weeks. That is the beginning of what will likely be an 18-month borrowing streak, says State Department of Labor and Industrial Relations Interim D...

Change Has Come to Congress
History is clear on this point. As Economist Stephen Moore has noted, every dollar of new Tax Revenue the Federal Government has collected since World War II has been associated with $1.17 in new spending, meaning lawmakers in both parties have spent every dime of revenue that has come in and then borrowed a little bit more on top of it to set a higher baseline for the next year. But the public has caught on to this game. Americans know that the root of our current problems lies in the fact not ...

Three Citi-affliated insurance brokers paid a $2 million fine for insurance law violations they allegedly committed ...
Three Citi-affliated Insurance brokers paid a $2 million fine for Insurance law violations they allegedly committed between 2003 to 2007. To embed this post, copy the code below and paste into your website or blog....

Census: Red states grow, blue states blow
James Taranto long ago identified the Roe Effect in which liberal areas cannot grow because of the prevalence of Abortion. Now the 2010 Census has the evidence. The Census released some numbers today on the affect of Population Growth in Red States on Congress. From the Associated Press: Texas stands to gain up to four seats due to a burgeoning Hispanic population and a diversified economy that held up relatively well during the Recession, according to projections by outside analysts using cen...

Beaver Management, Parachute Museums, and Other Earmarks: What Makes Wasteful Spending?
(Credit: CBS) As Congress continues to negotiate the Federal Government's Budget for this Fiscal Year, Conservatives aren't letting up their campaign against Earmarks. Lawmakers and conservative Political Activists alike are wailing that the regionally-specific federal spending projects are the hallmark of government waste. Conservative Republican Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma released his annual Wastebook today, which purports to highlight some of the most wasteful Government Spending of 201...

The economic outrage of 2010: Cowardly leaders failed to help working people
As we look back on 2010, the most significant economic event of the year was what didn't happen: Unemployment failed to come down, stubbornly hovering around 9.5% almost four years after the bubble broke, three years after the beginning of the Recession and more than two years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers. And, above and beyond any other reason, this stagnation persisted because our political leaders failed to muster the requisite courage to tackle our problems at their source. With o...

Senior Safety Nets at Risk in 2011
When Texas Governor Rick Perry recently threatened to pull his state out of Medicaid, he was hardly alone. Across the country, state Budgets continue to be strapped. Federal stimulus dollars are running out. And the latest Federal Tax and stimulus package will not provide much relief at the state and local levels. Meanwhile, looming provisions of health reform will add a projected 16 million to the Medicaid rolls. Where are the facilities to take care of these folks? Where is the money? [See 1...

Second Front Alliances
For President Barack Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, incoming House Education and Labor Committee Chairman John Kline will likely be as much a thorn in their school reform efforts as the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers. The suburban Minnesota congressman has already made it clear that he will oppose additional funding for Race to the Top, the $4.3 billion initiative that has spurred states such as California, Michigan, and Massachusetts ...

Federal Government Wants Private Businesses to Promote Union Rights in the Workplace
Wednesday, December 22, 2010 By Sam Hananel, Associated Press President Obama addresses the AFL-CIO Executive Council meeting in Washington on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2010. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka is seated to Obama’s right. (Photo from AFL-CIO Web site) Washington (AP) - Most Private Employers would have to display posters informing workers about their right to form a union under a proposed federal rule that is bound to please unions and draw the ire of companies trying to resist lab...

Congress Freezes Federal Salaries in Stopgap Spending Bill
The House passed a continuing resolution Tuesday by a vote of 193 to 165 to fund the Federal Government at current spending levels until March 4. The measure made an exception for the Veterans Administration and Pell Grants, which both received funding increases, and included language requested by the White House to freeze salaries for non-military federal workers for the next two years. The stopgap spending measure was the last act in a drama over Federal Funding that has tied Congress in knots...

Congress Freezes Federal Salaries in Stopgap Spending Bill
The House passed a continuing resolution Tuesday by a vote of 193 to 165 to fund the Federal Government at current spending levels until March 4. The measure made an exception for the Veterans Administration and Pell Grants, which both received funding increases, and included language requested by the White House to freeze salaries for non-military federal workers for the next two years. The stopgap spending measure was the last act in a drama over Federal Funding that has tied Congress in knots...

Stopgap spending measure clears Congress
WASHINGTON — Congress cleared a stopgap funding bill Tuesday to keep the Federal Government open into March, a temporary truce until Republicans and President Barack Obama rejoin the battle over the Budget next year. The bill was passed by the House in the evening just hours after speeding through the Senate. Obama was poised to sign it by midnight to avoid a government shutdown. The measure would freeze agency budgets at current levels. That's still too high for Republicans set to take ov...

House OKs Tax Package; No BABs
WASHINGTON — House members on Thursday night voted 277 to 148 to approve an $858 billion tax package that contains few bond-related provisions and no extensions of the Build America Bond program or the increased small issuer limit for bank-qualified bonds, both of which expire Dec. 31. The Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010, which garnered a surprising number of votes from Democrats, many of whom had complained about the tax benefits the bill w...

New House Rules, START to Finish, Quorum Issues, Three Questions, Trivia
* The so-called Gephardt rule, which allows the House to automatically pass a Debt-limit increase upon adoption of a conference report on the Budget -- without a separate vote -- will be eliminated. * A bill reducing House operating costs will be made in order for Jan. 6. * The names of three committees are changing: They will be the Committee on Ethics (which means reporters will no longer have to write out the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct -- ah, it feels good to say goodb...

OVERNIGHT HEALTH: Feds propose reviews of insurance rate hikes
Welcome to The Hill's evening roundup of the day's health policy news and advance look at tomorrow's schedule. Tuesday’s health news: Feds propose review for unreasonable Health Insurance hikes: Health Insurance hikes greater than 10 percent will be scrutinized by the states and the Federal Government under a proposed rule released Tuesday morning. The Healthcare Reform law requires the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department to provide more Oversight of “unreasonable” rate hik...