Wednesday, May 27, 2020

HEROES Act Rewards States and Cities for Bad Fiscal Practices

The huge funding requests essentially assume that the entire recession is a function of the virus and that governments deserve to be made whole for any losses, even though fiscal analysts have warned for years that another recession was coming and many states were unprepared for it.

The Heroes Act includes sending new rounds of stimulus checks to Americans, forgiving student debt for "Economically distressed" borrowers, funding the arts and humanities, and repealing the $10,000 limit on state and local tax deductions.

Added to the money that states and cities have already received, their total stimulus would surpass $1.5 trillion if the legislation passed as the Democrats proposed it.

Based on population figures alone, states and cities would divide about $667 billion, according to the Tax Foundation.

Many states face extreme fiscal problems now because they've continued with bad budgeting practices for years, refusing to initiate reforms even after the fiscal pressures created by the 2008 recession.

Some fiscal experts have warned that if we don't bail out states or big cities that were already distressed before the lockdowns, their failure could harm our entire financial system.

The purpose of any additional aid to states and cities should be primarily to ameliorate the direct impact of the virus itself, and secondarily to motivate states to enact sensible reforms that make their budgets more resistant to fiscal shocks.

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