Today the Senate voted to approve a $26 billion dollar plan for federal aide to cash-strapped states.
The federal aide was approved 61 to 39. In the aide plan, $16.1 billion dollars in additional Medicaid money will be offered, along with $10 billion dollars to prevent future layoffs for teachers and first responders.
State officials have been anxious to press for political action for their representatives. The state officials stated they needed money to have a sufficient budget.Senate Democrats claim that almost thirty states have already included the Medicaid Fund in their fiscal year for 2011 budgets. The bill is designed to rescue 290,000 jobs from being lost.
President Barack Obama also examined it earlier in the week. He asked lawmakers to pass additional assistance to states, which has been reviewed in Congress for months.
The Senate was scheduled to vote on the federal aide plan on Monday, but Reid pushed it back to amend the legislation after learning it would increase the deficit by $4.9 billion dollars. The amended bill reduces the deficit by $1.4 billion.
“The trillion dollar stimulus bill was supposed to be timely, targeted and temporary.Yet here we are, a year and a half later, and they’re already coming back for more. The purpose of this bill is clear: it’s to create a permanent need for future state bailouts, at a time when we can least afford it”, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky said earlier in the week.
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