As White House Pushes SBA Loans, Bad Debt Piles Up All Around
Mike Klein
This week President Barack Obama traveled through important Midwest primary states to carry the message that he’s doing something about jobs. Or, he will soon, probably next month, after his smart people think about it a few weeks longer. The White House website already features a Small Business Administration section and what it says are 100 SBA success stories.
SBA is neither Republican nor Democrat and it definitely is not Tea. It has been used by White Houses of both stripes, and it has been praised and condemned. The White House budget director under President Ronald Reagan wanted to abolish it. SBA survived because politicians recognized that receiving money from politicians made folks feel good about politicians.
The Small Business Administration is a Dwight Eisenhower-era invention. It has been around since 1953. It came into vogue after World War II and the Korean War when Americans were on a mission to create consumerism. Folks wanted to buy things and folks who wanted to sell things were starting businesses by the millions. SBA money helped start some of those shops. Less important were cumbersome philosophical issues about whether government should fund business start-ups.
The White House is holding up the Small Business Administration as one resource to help put Americans back to work – which will put taxpaying Americans in hock because SBA loans have to be paid back. It ain’t free money.
In pursuit of transparency, here’s what the White House would rather you didn’t know: Taxpayers are on the hook for nearly $70 billion in SBA loans to start-up businesses that failed, especially during the last ten years. When that happens the largest portion of the bill goes to taxpayers. That is not a message politicians are eager to share.
A new CATO Institute report from Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven even makes their case to abolish the Small Business Administration because, “The SBA benefits a relatively tiny number of small businesses at the expense of the vast majority of small business that do not receive government assistance. SBA subsidies also represent a form of corporate welfare for the banking industry.” SBA loans are made by banks. Taxpayers are on the hook for 85 percent when loans default and the banks are owed. Banks are willing and even eager government partners.
The CATO report states: “The SBA will cost taxpayers about $6.2 billion in 2011. Annual outlays are typically closer to $1 billion, but the SBA has suffered higher than usual losses on its guaranteed loans in recent years, so the costs imposed on taxpayers have soared. The SBA will guarantee almost $24 billion in new loans in 2011. The share of guaranteed loans outstanding that the SBA — and ultimately federal taxpayers — are on the hook for is about $70 billion.”
Using data from the Federal Reserve Board, the National Federation of Independent Business, the Government Accountability Office and academic and government sources, CATO said 19.4 percent of SBA loans made to the top 15 industries that received them failed between 2001 and 2010. One in four restaurants failed, two in ten beauty salons failed, one in four miscellaneous retail sales stores failed and so forth. Dentists and physicians had the lowest failure rates.
In their analysis de Rugy and DeHaven noted that President Dwight Eisenhower initially opposed creating the Small Business Administration but he eventually relented. In 1958 the White House Budget Office said SBA was “an uncontrollable program.” The agency grew into its own dynasty over several decades.
SBA loans were used by President Ronald Reagan during his first term to support federal set-asides to minority firms. During Reagan’s second term his budget director, the often controversial David Stockman, described SBA as “a billion dollar waste – a rat hole” and Reagan supported trying to abolish SBA. That didn’t happen. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both supported expansion of SBA loan programs.
Two years ago President Obama used SBA loans as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and this week SBA loans and success stories are being showcased again, as if there is no possible downside. This is happening, de Rugy and DeHaven point out, even though SBA’s recent track record continues to get worse. Bad loans increased from $1 billion in 2006 and 2007 to $3.9 billion in 2009 and $4.8 billion in 2010.
Beware whenever someone says, “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
More Georgia and Southern H.S. Students are Taking the ACT
Mike Klein
There are two big cats in the national college admission test industry – the SAT which is familiar in Georgia because that is what most students here take, and the ACT which is taken by fewer Georgia students, but like the SAT, it also has a big national college admissions testing footprint.
Increasingly, southern states students are taking the ACT. This week the Southern Regional Education Board said at least 50% of 2011 high school seniors took the ACT in 10 of SREB’s 16 member states. Georgia is not one of those states, but it is trending in that direction. Last year 44 percent of Georgia seniors took the ACT. The ratio grew to 47 percent this year.
Here is what SREB said about how southern students performed on the 2011 ACT:
“This year’s average composite ACT scores rose or held steady from 2010 in most SREB states where at least half of seniors in the Class of 2011 have taken the college admission test, even as the numbers of students taking the test and aspiring to college increased in the SREB region and the nation, according to ACT Inc. data released on August 17.
“In the 10 SREB states in which more than 50 percent of graduating seniors have taken the ACT, scores rose in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana and South Carolina, stayed the same in Alabama and Oklahoma, and declined one-tenth of a point in Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. The average composite score for all SREB states was 20.2, the same as in 2010. The U.S. average composite score was 21.1, up one-tenth of a point.
“Since 2006, the number of graduating seniors taking the ACT has risen in all 16 SREB states. Use of the ACT has soared especially in Arkansas (where 91 percent of graduating seniors now have taken it), Oklahoma (now at 76 percent), Florida (now at 66 percent) and West Virginia (now at 65 percent). In Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi and Tennessee, virtually all students take the ACT. In the region overall this year, about 618,000 graduating seniors had taken the ACT by their senior year — up by more than 185,000 from 2006, and by nearly 30,000 from last year alone.
“Hispanic students in SREB states not only increased the percentage of students tested but also increased their average composite score by two-tenths of a point. The score for black students in the region also increased, by one-tenth of a point. The regional score for white students held steady from 2010. On the ACT, each one-tenth of a point is considered significant.
“It’s promising that the SREB region’s score held steady, even as many more students took the test, especially students from underrepresented groups. It shows that aspirations for college and career training after high school are growing for all students — and that is (the) key to the future of our region,” said Joan Lord, SREB’s vice president of Education Policies.”
You can learn more about SREB initiatives and studies on its website.
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Deal, Olens Praise Rejection of ObamaCare Individual Mandate
Mike Klein
Georgia’s governor and attorney general said Friday’s decision by the federal appeals court in Atlanta that strikes down the federal health care reform individual mandate is “a huge step toward victory” but ultimately, ObamaCare will be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Governor Nathan Deal and Attorney General Sam Olens issued a statement about two hours after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta released its 2-to-1 opinion:
“We applaud today’s ruling from the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit striking down the individual mandate as ‘a wholly novel and potentially unbounded assertion of congressional authority.’ Today’s ruling recognizes the core principles of our federalist system and reminds an over-reaching federal government that the Constitution applies to it, too.
“We do not, however, agree with all findings in the decision. Unlike the 11th Circuit, we believe that the Obama administration should be taken at its word that the individual mandate is crucial to the whole bill, and that the whole bill should be struck down.
Governor Nathan Deal
Attorney General Sam Olens
“But this much is certain: Federal health care reform is on life support, and this case will be decided by the Supreme Court of the United States. Today is a huge step toward victory, but it is also a day that emphasizes the importance of the work ahead.”
Friday’s decision came in a case filed by Florida and joined by 25 states including Georgia. In January, federal judge Roger Vinson ruled all of federal health reform was unconstitutional. The federal government appealed. Friday’s decision rejected only the individual mandate.
Chief Judge Joel Dubina and Circuit Judge Frank Hull found “the individual mandate contained in the Act exceeds Congress’s enumerated commerce power.”
Their majority opinion said, “What Congress cannot do under the Commerce Clause is mandate that individuals enter into contracts with private insurance companies for the purchase of an expensive product from the time they are born until the time they die,” the opinion said.
Judge Stanley Marcus disagreed in dissent. He wrote that the majority opinion ignored the “undeniable fact that Congress’ commerce power has grown exponentially over the past two centuries, and is now generally accepted as having afforded Congress the authority to create rules regulating large areas of our national economy.”
Obama administration options include asking the complete 11th Circuit Court to review the opinion, or it could appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Three federal appeals court cases are working their way toward a Supreme Court resolution. The court in Cincinnati upheld ObamaCare and court in Richmond has yet to issue its opinion. A decision by the U.S. Supreme Court would come during the 2012 presidential election year.
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Open Meetings, Records Act Rewrite Pushed by Attorney General Olens
Mike Klein
The House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to meet on August 30 to discuss a rewrite of the state Open Meetings and Records Act that has become a priority for Attorney General Sam Olens. House Bill 397 was filed late in this past spring’s session and a vote is possible next year. “My goal is to pass the bill,” Olens said. “I’m not putting myself out here for failure.”
Making public records easier to obtain, opening more meetings to citizen eyes and cracking down harder on those who prevent that from happening has become a goal for the first-term Attorney General. He made that clear during a recent presentation to the Atlanta Press Club.
“While the press continues to spend much energy on ORA – the Open Records Act – which I totally understand and appreciate – I would suggest to you that most abuses occur with regard to the Open Meetings Act,” Olens told about 115 Press Club guests during a panel discussion.
“When you go to a public meeting and they cover 20 topics in 15 minutes please don’t think that the meeting’s agenda was handled at the meeting. So the most meaningful changes in this rewrite relate to the Meetings Act rather than Open Records.”
Attorney General Sam Olens
Olens noted one particularly egregious recent Open Records Act request case. A citizen who requested information from the Cherokee County School District was told it would take several thousand hours to produce the work, only after he submitted a check for more than $324,000.
“My office called the lawyer for the Cherokee County School board and said, you really don’t want our letter do you? The next week the individual got the documents he wanted,” Olens said.
House Bill 397 would address how much governments can charge in advance for records requests, set guidelines for providing them electronically, and it would mandate which records public agencies must keep and for how long.”
The legislation would also introduce the possibility of civil or criminal penalties for Open Meetings or Records Act offenders, and steeply increased fines.
“When you look at other states that are considered (to have) model Sunshine Laws, they all have strong legislative intent that you’re supposed to give the public government information. We don’t have that in our law at all, and that’s in (the legislation),” Olens said. “We are trying as best we can to strengthen the law and get it passed.”
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Governor Deal Asked, Is Transportation Sales Tax In Trouble?
Mike Klein
Governor Nathan Deal did not hesitate Wednesday when was asked whether the state regional transportation sales tax referendum scheduled for next year is in trouble, as some believe. If the measure passes the sales tax would be imposed for ten years and it would fund projects that voters would know about before they approve the money.
“I don’t necessarily think that it is,” Governor Deal replied during a news conference at the State Capitol. “Obviously, anytime in an economy like we have now getting people to understand that an additional one penny is going to be asked of them is a very significant undertaking.
“But by the same token, I think this is a unique opportunity for Georgians to have a say in the transportation and transit projects that they think are important in their part of the state.”
T-SPLOST – the penny-per-dollar transportation special local option sales tax – is scheduled for a July 2012 primary election vote. Deal will ask the General Assembly to move the vote to next year’s November 8 general election. Look for the change to become official when the General Assembly is in town starting next week for the once every ten years redistricting special session.
Governor Nathan Deal
“This is a long way away and we are proposing the date be changed to give more time for more Georgians to participate,” Deal said. “We believe that moving the actual vote to the general election will, in fact, do that.”
Almost 2.6 million Georgians voted in the November 2010 general election, but fewer than 1.1 million voted in the summer primary. The move is a gamble that more voters who are inclined to support the measure will be vote in the general election.
Now to the business of redistricting. Legislators and mapmakers have been working for months on new maps that will add one U.S. House district in north Georgia, giving the state 14 Congress members. Population growth and shifts will increase north Georgia representation in the state Senate and House, with the byproduct being reduced representation from southern sections.
State House district proposed maps will be released online this Friday. Georgia voting district maps face certification by the U.S. Justice Department before they can become official. Legislators will also be asked to extend the gasoline tax rate freeze that Deal imposed in July.
Some very big issues that are not part of the Special Session remain in play. Work continues on tax reform that was left incomplete in April when legislators lost confidence in fiscal data. A K-12 education finance reform committee is at work on ideas to rewrite the state’s 26-year-old public education funding formula. A corrections reform effort is underway, and last week Governor Deal appointed a commission to work on improving higher education graduation rates.
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Michelle Rhee: No Child Left Behind “Not Perfect” but not a Total Bust
Mike Klein
Michelle Rhee, the innovative founder of StudentsFirst and former chancellor of Washington, D.C. public schools, spoke about the new Obama administration No Child Left Behind waivers when she appeared on CNN on Wednesday morning. “American Morning” host Christine Romans asked, has NCLB been a bust?
“I don’t think so at all. Let me be clear that the law is not perfect. I think everyone knows there are some changes and modifications that need to be made, but I don’t think that anyone can doubt that it has brought a new level of accountability to American schools,” Rhee said.
“We are looking at data in a way that we never have before, we are paying attention to sub-groups of kids and saying that it’s not okay for certain groups of kids in your school or school district to be failing and in those ways, it’s incredibly important.”
On Monday, U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan used the White House briefing room to announce that all 50 states could apply for waivers from the No Child Left Behind requirement that 100 percent of students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. Georgia will apply.
StudentsFirst Founder Michelle Rhee
Michelle Rhee again on CNN: “We want kids to meet the standards. Now, is that all that should be happening? No. One of the things you see is tests only test certain subjects, often mat and reading, and sometimes what schools do is go overboard and they just try to jam reading and math down the kids’ throats. That’s not the answer.
“The research shows that kids who have access to a broad-based curriculum are the ones who do better academically. But also, we shouldn’t go to the other direction to say testing is evil, testing is bad. We have to be able to, in a very objective and consistent way, know whether or not kids are learning and meeting the standards. The way to do that is a standardized test.
“One of the things that drive people nuts about No Child Left Behind is that it sets certain benchmarks for proficiency. X percent of your kids have to be at proficiency and it goes up every year until 2014 when 100 percent of your kids are supposed to be proficient. People look at that and say, it’s not realistic.
“We have to be able to look at growth. Is the school moving student achievement in the right direction? Are the students growing to meet certain targets? Instead of having a binary distinction of either met Adequate Yearly Progress or you have not, what has the growth looked like? We have to modify the system so that achievement and growth can be taken into account without there being this strict binary yes and no.”
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Obama Gives States What They Want: Less “No Child Left Behind”
Mike Klein
No Child Left Behind has moved one step closer toward No Longer Totally Relevant.
President Barack Obama‘s administration used the White House briefing room on Monday afternoon to announce that states may apply for waivers to avoid 2014 testing mandates in NCLB. State school superintendent John Barge said Georgia will apply for the waiver.
No Child Left Behind was the education initiative of President George W. Bush. It was modeled on a program enacted when he was Texas governor. It requires that 100 percent of public school students be proficient in math and reading by 2014. NCLB is blamed for creating a “Teach the Test” mania as schools struggled to make AYP – Adequate Yearly Progress.
“No Child Left Behind, in those terms, we’re not going to see that again,” Barge said when we spoke on Monday afternoon. “Certainly it’s not the death knell for accountability, but does it put the actual terms AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress) and No Child Left Behind in question, possibly. We will still have accountability. It will just look different.”
Addressing the White House press corps, Domestic Policy Director Melody Barnes described NCLB as “a punitive system that does not allow for reform.” Barnes said the administration moved forward with its own NCLB changes because Congress has not rewritten NCLB.
“No Child Left Behind is four years overdue for being rewritten,” said U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan. “It is far too punitive. It is far too prescriptive. It led to dummying down standards and narrowing curriculum … We can’t afford to have the law of the land be one that has so many perverse incentives or disincentives to the kind of progress that we want to see.”
John Barge, State School Superintendent
Barnes and Duncan made clear that states will become eligible for NCLB waivers if they embrace reforms that the administration believes are necessary to move education forward. States that do not agree must continue to abide by the current No Child Left Behind legislation.
Whereas NCLB was a top down federal mandate on states, Barge said the national Council of Chief State School Officers has been working on a replacement for NCLB’s single-minded reliance on standardized testing as the principal measuring stick for education success.
“We all know that a student can pass a test but that student may be anything but prepared to be successful,” Barge said. The model being proposed to Washington by the state education chief executives will rely on some two dozen or more indicators, Barge said, including SAT and ACT scores, college credits earned during high school and other measurements to evaluate success.
NCLB is sometimes identified as the reason for a surge in test cheating scandals.
The Atlanta Public Schools test cheating scandal made national news when 178 educators were identified as participants in falsifying tests to improve school performance. Atlanta is not alone. Duncan has said federal officials will look into other possible cases nationwide. On Monday, he singled out Tennessee for taking the right approach to measuring achievement.
Arne Duncan, U.S. Education Secretary
“The state of Tennessee like many states had a low bar under No Child Left Behind,” Duncan said. “They were in fact lying to children, lying to parents. They were saying that 91 percent of students were proficient. They did the courageous thing. They raised the bar significantly.
“Tennessee went from 91 percent of children proficient in math to 34 percent. That was a very tough lesson but for the first time, they are telling the truth. The current law provides lots of penalties for that kind of courage,” Duncan said.
“We want to move those (penalties) and reward states that are telling the truth … Everywhere I go, teachers, parents, principals, school board members, state superintendents are asking for flexibility to do the right thing.”
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
As Economy Collapsed: White House Scheduled a Nice Photo-Op
Mike Klein
On the same day that the administration released another weak monthly unemployment report President Barack Obama went to the picturesque Washington Navy Yard to announce new efforts to put American veterans back to work. And you think that’s no coincidence?
Media seemed desperate on Friday morning to put the most positive possible spin on federal labor statistics that 117,000 new jobs were created in July, and new job totals for May and June were revised slightly upward. By any measure the economy remains stagnant. But that is what passed for good news during a tough week in which very little went right for the President.
On Tuesday the White House was boxed into a corner and forced to accept a debt ceiling deal that candidate Barack Obama never in a thousand years would have thought possible during the heady 2008 campaign. The President was significantly outmaneuvered in negotiations and at the very end it was Vice President Joe Biden who cut the deal with Republican leaders.
Wednesday evening it was back to aggressive campaign flourishes in Chicago where images of national debt discussion were replaced by images from a lavish $35,000 per plate Obama 2012 fundraiser that raised millions, most of it eventually going to the Democratic Party. Could that timing have been any worse? One day later on Thursday the U.S. stock markets had their worst day in three years, sparking fears of a double dip recession.
The Super Committee that was created under the debt ceiling legislation will argue for months before Republicans and Democrats present a plan to cut at least $1.2 trillion over the next decade. You will hear a lot about sacrifice during those rigid negotiations. Here is a bit more sacrifice: investors lost $1.9 trillion in 6.5 hours on Thursday.
Incidentally, investors are sometimes called people. People own retirement accounts, people pay for educations, people pay for Grandma, people pay all manner of local, state and federal taxes, people own small businesses that employ people like themselves. People can’t print money or sell bonds to China. People can just watch their lifetime investments plunge. Some people hope they can control their destinies without relying on government.
You could hardly blame the White House for wanting to announce something good on Friday. Monthly jobs numbers are no surprise to the administration. They knew what was coming. They knew what all those charts would look like on television. They know the U.S. domestic economy needs to create well above 200,000 jobs and preferably 300,000 jobs per month to grow. They know it must come really quick to prop up Obama 2012.
So if the administration wanted to find a patriotic backdrop like the Navy Yard to announce a new veterans’ job initiative on the same day it released another dismal jobs report, then perhaps that was their best damage control.
When you are the White House you do what seems to work best. You create a photo-op.
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
Big Push Starts to Improve Georgia Higher Ed Graduation Rates
Mike Klein
Governor Nathan Deal has announced Georgia is one of ten states that will receive $1 million grants from Complete College America to support improvements in higher education graduation rates. These grants are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. One result you can expect from this initiative is closer coordination as it benefits students between the state’s university and technical college systems.
Two years ago Georgetown University’s highly regarded Center on Education and the Workforce predicted 62 percent of all jobs nationwide will require some college education within the next seven years. Georgia is far from ready according to the Complete College America state data website that reports 34 percent of Georgians 25-to-34 years old have college degrees.
Complete College America found that for every 100 Georgia students who begin ninth grade, just 38 enter college the fall after completing high school. Just six graduate with a bachelor’s degree within four years. Just three graduate with an associate’s degree within three years.
The Southern Regional Education Board recently challenged its 16 member states including Georgia to improve higher education graduation rates. SREB said, “Fewer than half of ninth graders in SREB states and the nation have a reasonable chance of college enrollment — an alarming statistic.” SREB focuses on southern states from Delaware to Texas.
Governor Nathan Deal
Governor Deal announced his Complete College Georgia Initiative on Thursday morning during a news conference at the State Capitol in Atlanta.
“We must increase the number of students with access to higher education and ensure that these students graduate with post-secondary degrees in a timely manner,” Deal said. “We know this problem is significant. Less than a quarter of full-time students at two-year colleges ever graduate and only 44 percent at four-year colleges get their degree within six years. We also know the problem is fixable.”
One goal will be to ensure higher education becomes more seamless. A common concern has been the difficulty that students sometimes encounter when they attempt to transfer credits between schools, especially between technical college and university system institutions.
Part of the $1 million grant will improve remedial education at four schools: the Coastal College of Georgia and Georgia Gwinnett College in the university system; and, Athens Technical College and DeKalb Technical College in the technical colleges system.
A new scholarship program will focus on low-income middle school students who have college potential and it will provide support through high school. Students who complete the program will receive tuition scholarships. Private partners are being sought to assist with seed funding.
The Governor’s Office will also create a commission to focus on changes to higher education funding, similar to an existing commission that is working now on K-to-12 education funding.
Complete College America was established two years ago by Stan Jones who is a former Indiana state commissioner of higher education. CCA receives support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Ford Foundation, the Lumina Foundation for Education and the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, in addition to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Other $1 million grant winning states include Arkansas, California, Colorado, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Tennessee. Two states will be announced soon. Thirty-three states applied.
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
ProPublica: Overwhelming Data Proves U.S. Economy is Sputtering
Mike Klein
The following data appeared this week in a ProPublica article written by Braden Goyette. This data is staggering. It confirms again how far the U.S. domestic economy has collapsed even though technically economists claim the recession ended two years ago. The article was published before Thursday’s U.S. equity markets meltdown. ProPublica is an independent, non-profit journalism project that specializes in stories with “moral force.” ProPublica won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and a 2010 Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. ProPublica is a valuable resource.
- Annual rate at which the GDP grew this year: 1.3 percent between April and June, 0.4 percent between January and March
- Average annual GDP growth from 1998-2007: 3.02 percent
- Total jobs lost since January 2008: 8.7 million
- Total jobs recovered since January 2008: 1.8 million
- Recession technically ended: over two years ago, in June 2009
- Current unemployment rate: 9.2 percent
- The “natural unemployment rate”: 5 percent
- Months that the unemployment rate has been around 9 percent or more: 28
- Number of unemployed people in June 2011: 14.1 million
- Growth in number of unemployed people since March 2011: 545,000
- Number of long-term unemployed people in June 2011: 6.3 million, or 44.4 percent of the unemployed
- Pace at which jobs were added throughout the late 1990s: 350,00 per month
- Jobs that were added in June: 18,000
- Jobs the U.S. needs to create to 5 percent unemployment rate: 6.8 million, as of January 2011
- Years it will take to get back to an unemployment rate of 5 percent: four years if we’re adding jobs at 350,000 per month; 11 years if we’re adding jobs at the 2005 rate of 210,000 per month
- Unemployed workers per job opening: 4.98
- Number of people who weren’t in the labor force, but wanted work, as of June 2011: 2.7 million
- The last time the labor force participation rate was lower than it is now: 1984
- The amount of state budget spending that comes from the federal government: about 1/3, or $478 billion in 2010
- Increase in before-tax corporate profits in the first quarter of 2011: $140.3 billion
- Percentage of Americans’ total personal income that comes from federal funds: almost 20 percent
- Spending cuts in the proposed budget: at least $2.3 trillion over a decade from 2012-2021
- How long you can currently receive unemployment benefits: up to 99 weeks
- The number of those weeks funded to some extent by federal aid: up to 73
- People currently relying on federal unemployment benefits: 3.8 million
- How long you’ll be able to receive unemployment benefits if you lose your job after July 1, 2011: 20 to 26 weeks, depending on your state
- Recovery-funded jobs reported by recipients, according to recovery.gov: 550,621
- Amount of stimulus money left to be spent: $122.8 billion of the original $787 billion
(Mike Klein is Editor at the Georgia Public Policy Foundation)
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