State Aid Clears Senate

The state aid bill cleared the Senate today by a vote of 61-38.  The bill includes support for teachers jobs and medicaid support.  The bill allocates $26 billion dollars to states preventing the firing of 290,000 teachers, firefighters and police officers.  The House will return next week to vote on the bill.  I am definitely elated to see that we are trying to save jobs of those critical components of our community, it needed to be done.  However,  the states need to need to implement strict austerity measures to reign in their budgets.  In articles related to this, one of the reasons for its passage was so that states would not push the burden down to the local governments and obviously down to its citizens.  [ read more... ]