Oregon counties are following New York’s into the world of fiscal crisis: During February’s legislative session, Oregon lawmakers created some new tools to help counties facing fiscal insolvency. Curry County is expected to be the first off the cliff, with $5 million dollars in obligations coming due in July. NPR has an article and interviews:…
Category: Austerity
Deep cuts to the federal safety net, continued
As we head into the home stretch of the presidential election, Congress is working on the budget. Much of the work is now being done in committees, and over the next months we’ll see a lot of extreme Republican proposals, Democratic pledges to halt them, and all the politics that precedes an actual budget. But…
Public-sector job losses, continued
More from the Economic Policy Institute about the damaging effects of mass public layoffs. The current recovery is the only one that has seen public-sector losses over its first 31 months. If public-sector employment had grown since June 2009 by the average amount it grew in the three previous recoveries (2.8 percent) instead of shrinking…
Detroit’s emergency, to be continued
Detroit’s City Council adjourned last Thursday, vowing to come back Monday to consider the state’s proposed consent agreement. Yesterday’s deliberations didn’t produce a decision, although it became clear that several members would not vote for the agreement. Tuesday afternoon, the Council again announced that it would not yet be voting on the agreement. But the…
A Cruel Republican Budget – NYTimes.com
Apparently undaunted by news that the UK, Europe’s biggest embracer of “austerity,” is expected to recover more slowly than any other OECD country except Italy, House Republicans propose a punitive budget: The budget, developed by Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, would cut $3.3 trillion from low-income programs over 10 years, according to the Center on…