Trouble ahead for new stimulus bill
Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa has proposed spending an additional $23 billion to prevent thousands of teacher layoffs across the country.
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan blessed the idea in testimony before Congress earlier this month, warning of an “educational catastrophe.” Last December, the U.S. House approved the money and has been waiting since for Senate action.
But if Dianne Feinstein’s conditional support is any indication on how the Senate may lean – and her position often is a telltale sign – then school districts shouldn’t bank on getting the money.
Feinstein issued a one-paragraph statement last week, in which she called for offsetting any additional spending with cuts in other parts of the federal budget. That requirement will further complicate chances for Harkin’s bill.
Her statement:
“California is facing extraordinary budgetary pressures and more than 22,000 teachers across the state so far have received pink slips notifying them that they may not have a job for the next school year. I strongly support efforts to keep our teachers in the classroom. However, in light of the bleak federal fiscal situation, I believe that we need to find ways to at least partially, if not fully, offset the cost of new measures to help states like California prevent the loss of thousands of teacher jobs.”
Harkin wants his Keep Our Educators Working Act, which has 20 sponsors, classified as an emergency spending measure, like last year’s $100 billion stimulus package for education. But others, like Feinstein, don’t want to add to the deficit in an election year in which Tea Party Republicans are yelling about the nation’s growing debt. (Never mind that President Bush’s tax cuts in his first term and the war in Iraq are responsible for the portion of the deficit not compounded by the recession.)
Last year’s emergency bill included a two-year, $46 billion in general assistance for school districts. Many districts front-loaded the first year’s allocation. Harkin’s bill, which would cover only 2010-11, would be half of the $46 billion
Without the aid, Duncan is predicting between 100,000 and 300,000 school jobs will be lost next year. California districts have given layoff notices to 22,000 teachers, although teachers in some districts have responded in the past few weeks by agreeing to pay cuts. United Teachers Los Angeles alone endorsed lopping off five days this year and next from the school calendar, saving 2,000 jobs of colleagues.
The Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington estimates that the current stimulus bill for education saved 342,000 positions or 5.5 percent of the school workforce.
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There’s only one way to pay off debt. We must raise revenue. At what point do we face facts and raise California income taxes and remove the rollbacks on DMV fees?
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You have it right, Laura. … The notion that Prop. 13 is “the third rail of politics” is no longer valid, in my opinion. Most people in California today don’t actually know what Prop. 13 is and wing it based on a brief description with no prior information when asked by pollsters (Mark Di Camillo of the Field Poll told me this himself). … The press helps discourage efforts to dismantle Prop. 13 by continually repeating the “third rail” cliche (though mindlessly, not maliciously, in my opinion). And reinstating the vehicle fees that Schwarzenegger all but destroyed our state by removing is a no-brainer.
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DiFi perhaps sees a key point here: the federal Govt and state Govts have the same bankrollers: all of us.
Does Harkin’s bill do anything to fix the structural deficits in the states? Any strings? Or is this just a way of passing the bill (heh heh) uphill to someone who a) can print money b) has a much better credit rating than most of the states?
Because if it is it’s only delaying the day of reckoning while running up the credit card even higher.
This is no ordinary recession like 91-92 where a quick car tax raise will fix us. This state (and others like NY, NJ, etc) are overdue for an overhaul. That means slightly higher but simpler taxes, and pain all around including deep cuts. How many people work for the state dept of education in Sacramento?
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It would be overly optimistic to claim that “a quick car tax will fix us.” On the other hand, at the beginning of his dismally failed governorship, Schwarzenegger’s first act was to eliminate a relatively painless fee imposed by his recalled predecessor in what is now clearly revealed as a wise and prudent act of governance. The revenues raised by that fee would have provided something of a cushion against the pain of the recession. The fact is that we need to decide whether we want to become a Third World country with only the barest-bones public services and infrastructure — and a fully privatized educational system available only to the resourced if the current forces in power have their way — or to reverse that course.
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It’s a bit rich of Senator Feinstein to take issue with deficit spending on this issue when she has failed to observe the same principles of fiscal prudence (if avoiding deficit spending is so defined; arguably, much of it is a net positive for the economy) in so many other votes.
Her position is facetious at best.
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