{"id":33399,"date":"2021-06-20T17:09:46","date_gmt":"2021-06-20T22:09:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=33399"},"modified":"2021-06-20T17:09:46","modified_gmt":"2021-06-20T22:09:46","slug":"to-the-disappointment-of-mcconnell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/06\/20\/to-the-disappointment-of-mcconnell\/","title":{"rendered":"To The Disappointment Of McConnell"},"content":{"rendered":"

While reading Noah Smith’s summary of disasters that didn’t happen<\/a> during the pandemic, it occurred to me that Senator McConnell (R-KY) might be a trifle disappointed in this one:<\/p>\n

\n

4) State budgets are healthy<\/h4>\n

The Great Recession clobbered state budgets, and they never really recovered. It was natural to expect that the COVID-19 recession would\u00a0have the same effect<\/a>. Most people predicted giant budget gaps and called urgently for a federal bailout of the states. Here\u2019s\u00a0Brookings, from April 2020<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[I]n the coming months, states will experience large declines in tax revenues and increased enrollment in safety-net programs as disruptions caused by COVID-19 drive incomes and consumption lower. Without assistance from the federal government, states will likely be forced to make deep program cuts, enact substantial tax increases, or both.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But fortunately, the crisis never happened. The relief bills raised income, and that income got taxed,\u00a0filling states\u2019 coffers<\/a>. Capital gains taxes resulting from the big stock market boom helped too. This May\u00a0it was reported<\/a>\u00a0that California has a $75.5 billion budget\u00a0surplus<\/em>. New York has\u00a0a more modest surplus<\/a>, as does\u00a0Texas<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In fact, by the time Biden gave states a big dollop of federal cash, most probably\u00a0no longer needed it<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s a known rumor that Senator McConnell would love to see state budgets, plural, get into trouble, because then the judiciary might assign a judge to supervise a state’s budget – and that might result in the big slashes in those budgets that he’d like to see.<\/p>\n

No such luck this time, Moscow Mitch.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While reading Noah Smith’s summary of disasters that didn’t happen during the pandemic, it occurred to me that Senator McConnell (R-KY) might be a trifle disappointed in this one: 4) State budgets are healthy The Great Recession clobbered state budgets, and they never really recovered. It was natural to expect \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33399"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33399\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33400,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33399\/revisions\/33400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}