Fiscal Year 2011 has started in most states.
Deficits abound. Congress has dropped the health stimulus from the Recovery Bill and reintroduced the Recovery bill without those provisions. However, Congress failed to reenact emergency unemployment compensation. It looks like they managed to get two Senate Republicans on board with the bill, but due to the death of Robert Byrd, the voting was still one short of the 60 required to bring cloture. Currently, there are over 1,000,000 people (1.2 or 1.3 million seem to be the numbers I have seen) who have already lost their extended unemployment compensation. Another 200,000 per week are expected to run out of benefits.
The Congress is taking a recess and will not resume consideration of the bill until the recess is over. They will be back in session starting July 12.
State budgets are projected to have deficits totaling around $89,000,000,000. The deficits in state budgets throughout the country are expected to lead to as many as 900,000 layoffs. In addition to the burden of employee loss, the state budgets would still be burdened by paying regular unemployment to the former employees for up to 26 weeks.
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