 (Illustration: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities) |
Editor’s Note: The following report is excerpted from Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium online newsletter published by the current No. 1 best-selling author, WND staff writer and columnist. Subscriptions are $99 a year or $9.95 per month for credit card users. Annual subscribers will receive a free autographed copy of “The Obama Nation,” the blueprint for Obama’s first term in office.
The total funding for the states provided in the Obama economic stimulus package will not be enough to get many through this year’s crisis, and next year might be even worse, Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert reports.
California is leading the nation with a budget deficit projected to be $42 billion by mid-2010 that does not appear to be easing, despite Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s declaration 14 weeks ago that the state is facing a budgetary emergency. Schwarzenegger has threatened to lay off 20,000 state workers.
Red Alert estimates that approximately $300 billion of the nearly $1 trillion deficit-financed economic stimulus plan will be spent funding states.
Florida’s state and local governments may receive up to $13.7 billion in federal stimulus money spread over three budget years.
Still, even with this federal stimulus money, Florida will have to make cuts, Corsi wrote.
Florida lawmakers have already cut $1 billion from current-year spending, as part of a $2.5 billion deficit-elimination package Republican Gov. Charlie Crist signed into law after a special legislative session last month.
Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley planned to travel to Washington and beg the state’s congressional delegation to include even more money for the states in the stimulus package.
O’Malley is concerned that even with the federal stimulus money, Maryland may have to face more than $50 million in midyear cuts as well as layoffs of 700 state employees.
“Will Obama come back to Congress for another windfall of $1 trillion dollars in deficit spending to keep the states afloat through the remainder of this year, or a third trillion?” Corsi wrote. “How about next year?”
Corsi expressed doubt that the stimulus plan will create the 4 million jobs Obama has promised. Without job creation, he said the economic downturn could become more severe, with states plunging deeper into the red.
Cities are also facing massive budget deficits. Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that New York City has cut $2 billion from planned spending over the last two years and plans to cut yet another $1 billion this year.
Despite these cuts, Bloomberg still warned the city still faces “a multibillion-dollar deficit.”
“We are hopeful that the federal stimulus package will provide some help,” Bloomberg wrote in a New York Daily News editorial, “but we cannot expect either the federal or state government to bail us out.”
Meanwhile, Red Alert’s author, whose books “The Obama Nation” and “Unfit for Command” have topped the New York Times best-sellers list, reports a rebellion against the growing dominance of federal control is beginning to spread at the state level. So far, eight states have introduced resolutions declaring state sovereignty under the Ninth and 10th Amendments to the Constitution, amendments specifying that powers not specifically enumerated to the federal government are reserved for the states or for the people.
Corsi received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in political science in 1972. For nearly 25 years, beginning in 1981, he worked with banks throughout the U.S. and around the world to develop financial services marketing companies to assist banks in establishing broker/dealers and insurance subsidiaries to provide financial planning products and services to their retail customers. In this career, Corsi developed three different third-party financial services marketing firms that reached gross sales levels of $1 billion in annuities and equal volume in mutual funds. In 1999, he began developing Internet-based financial marketing firms, also adapted to work in conjunction with banks.
In his 25-year financial services career, Corsi has been a noted financial services speaker and writer, publishing three books and numerous articles in professional financial services journals and magazines.
For more information on the growing state rebellion and for financial guidance during difficult times, read Jerome Corsi’s Red Alert, the premium, online intelligence news source by the WND staff writer, columnist and author of the New York Times No. 1 best-seller, “The Obama Nation.”
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