Federal Aid | featured news

...So Massachusetts used not just federal Medicaid money but federal dollars above and beyond that Medicaid money to finance their health reforms. It is difficult to see how Romney’s proposal to cut Medicaid spending and hand that reduced share over to the states would allow other states to follow Massachusetts’ example. It might not even permit Massachusetts to continue following Massachusetts’ example.

Beware of too much good luck, warns a classic Greek myth – a lesson that a Michigan woman who won a $1-million state lottery jackpot has learned the hard way. Michigan’s Department of Human Services has cut off $200 a month in food aid to Amanda Clayton in the wake of media reports that she had won $1 million in the state lottery in September. To make matters worse for Clayton, who lives in Lincoln Park near Detroit, her case has been turned over to state anti-fraud officials.

When the city of Chesapeake, Va., considered closing a crumbling, 80-year-old bridge over the Elizabeth River in 2008, local officials knew that neither the state nor the federal government would pay for a replacement. Just tearing down the old one would cost millions of dollars. So they sold it. “We paid them $10,” said Bob Hellman, one of the investors, but “what we gave them wasn’t just $10.” Hellman’s investors group, American Bridge Partners, agreed to remove the old bridge — and to build a brand-new one, solely with private money.

Heavily indebted states could get immediate relief from the Obama administration under a plan to temporarily suspend interest payments they owe the federal government for borrowing money to cover the soaring cost of unemployment benefits.

With one in every eight workers unemployed and empty state coffers,
California is borrowing billions of dollars from the federal government
to pay unemployment insurance.

The state is borrowing $40 million a day from the federal government to provide assistance to jobless workers, but has resisted changing the formulas it uses to determine and fund those benefits.California's fund for paying unemployment insurance is broke.

Freddie Mac posts $4.1 billion loss for third quarter, seeks additional $100 million in aid.

The House approves the measure on a largely party-line vote and President Obama swiftly signs it. It will save 161,000 teachers' jobs and sustain Medicaid funding.

Congress on Tuesday gave final approval to a $26.1-billion aid package for cash-strapped states that will keep 161,000 teachers and thousands of police, fire and other local government workers from being laid off.

President Barack Obama urged the US House to pass a $26 billion measure to aid cash-strapped states that he said would preserve thousands of jobs for teachers, police officers and other government ...

After much hoopla and expense, the US Census Bureau is ready to try and count every US resident. On Monday, 120 million households began receiving letters alerting residents to next week's official census 2010 kickoff ...