With roughly half of the economic stimulus money already obligated, federal officials are turning their attention to helping states fund vital services such as education and health care when the one-time aid runs out, a top Obama administration said Friday (Sept. 25).
Edward DeSeve, President Obama's special adviser on the recovery, declined to offer specifics on how Washington would help statehouses after the stimulus ends, including whether there would be another fiscal aid package for states. But he suggested that the fiscal relationship between the states and the federal government could change after the worst downturn since the Great Depression.
“At some point during the next two years, Congress is going to be faced with the need to rationalize the relationship between these spending accounts that they've given the states and the money they've appropriated to the states during this period and the great needs that the states have in their economies,” he said at a State Economic and Fiscal Forum for reporters co-sponsored by Capitolbeat and the Pew Center on the States, of which Stateline.org is a part. “Do we have the right fiscal balance between the states and the federal government?”
Read the full report Stimulus Question Looms: What Next? on Stateline.org.