The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center (MassBudget) this week released a detailed report on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s impact on Massachusetts. We thought Blue Mass Group readers might find it useful.
In total, MassBudget estimates that Massachusetts — both state and local governments, as well as non-governmental organizations and individuals — will receive approximately $17.7 billion through ARRA. This total is comprised of $3.6 billion to help the state address the budget gap; $5.8 billion in tax and related benefits to residents; $2 billion in other direct benefits to residents; $942 million in infrastructure repairs and improvements; and $5.4 billion for other ARRA priorities including workforce training, education, research, and energy efficiency.
Of this $17.7 billion, Massachusetts and its residents have already benefited from more than $4.3 billion in ARRA funds since the law’s passage in February 2009. A sizable portion of these funds, $1.8 billion, went to state government to reduce cuts and make targeted investments in health care, education and other important government services. In addition, residents have received at least $2.5 billion in additional, direct benefits in the form of tax reductions, Pell Grants, unemployment benefits, and other programs.
Click on the link here to see the report, and use the Table of Contents at the right to navigate the document.
Did you think that Red Mass Group readers might find it useful, as well?
Why not wait a few weeks after the reporting deadline on October 10th and provide a more meaningful report?
and not from analysis and understanding of the ARRA money, if we have so freakin’ much money to help balance the budget and stabilize services, why are we always hearing the budget blues from the the Patrick administration?
The state fiscal relief in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) helped close our budget gap, but was significantly less than the full gap. Our FY2010 budget gap was about $5 billion. The state was able to use a little over $1.6 billion from ARRA to help close that gap. Without this aid the state would have had to make significantly deeper cuts or would have had to raise taxes more.
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p>The state fiscal relief is only a portion of the resources coming into Massachusetts as a result of ARRA. There is also a lot of money that is going directly to residents in the form of federal tax breaks (such as the making work pay tax credit of $400 a person — see the report for details) and assistance such as extended unemployment benefits for people who have lost their jobs and food stamps for low income families. There is also funding for specific initiatives such as weatherization, job training, infrastructure, and other priorities for which the funding pays for the specific programs and does not go through the state budget. These elements of ARRA don’t help with the state’s fiscal challenges, but they do help the people of Massachusetts and our economy in other ways.
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p>On the question of why we released this now, the simple answer is that there is an enormous amount of information that we were able to gather that we think people would be interested in seeing now. There will be more information available at the end of the month and we will do an update, but we generally like to get information out as quickly as we can.
I’m reading it now. But will also be interested to see the impact of the additional information that is required to be filed in the coming weeks.
I feel frustrated reading this report that states repeatedly that the numbers are based upon a cutoff of September 30, but we all know that a mandatory filing was October 10th.
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p>I’m not buying the explanation, you already seem to have everything in place, updated numbers will probably not take much time to plug in. Maybe the analysis with differ, but at least you have a useful report.
Question: Where is all of this money coming from and who is paying the tab?
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p>Observation:
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p>Why not reduce spending—that’s a novel idea.
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p>Since everyone here lives within a budget (or is among those having their home foreclosed) why is it that we all know and realize that money is not created out of thin air. Money borrowed, must be repaid or at some point in time there will be an economic collapse. Is everyone hoping that they will be long gone dead when the collapse occurs? Do we not care about the legacy we are leaving the young people in USA ( which is all of you folks) Have you any idea what this crushing debt burden is going to have on the quality of your life? Is having some discomfort and going without for a period of time that intolerable?
I don’t get it.
George Bush left the young people in the USA. Tax cuts for the wealthy are still in place, which were suppose to improve the economy, increase jobs, wages and benefits for Main St America. When is that going to start working MCRD?
If these tax cuts would just trickle down, there would be fewer forclosures, and fewer people needing government services and subsidies. If more American’s were working and earning more, they would also be paying taxes and spending money. That’s the way tax cuts for the wealthy are suppose to play out. It hasn’t played out, it is a failed theory.
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p>You don’t get it because you don’t want to get it.
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if a point of reference was provided in discussions and news releases about budget shortages and anticipated cutbacks. For example, the cutbacks to balance the budget shortfall several months ago applied to which F/Y budget? Is this currently discussed problem on top of that, or merely a continuation of it as needing to be applied to the new F/Y budget? Was the budget we are talking about now adjusted downward when the cutbacks last year were implemented, or are we just seeing a structural shortfall carried forward and having to be dealt with today. I’m sorry I’m not more clear in my questioning, but I don’t see the info anywhere to reference.
I happened to be unemployed right at the time the stimulus passed, and my weekly unemployment went up by $25/week (it took a few weeks to go into effect, but it was retroactive to the date it became law, so I got a lump sum covering the previous few weeks’ $25’s at first).
You state here that we are getting $3.6b to cover the gap, so that would lead one to believe that our budget shortfall in the state was drastically worse w/o this fed money?
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p>If so, our deficit w/o DC printing presses was close to $5b???
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p>Not quite sure I’d bring this up as a talking point.