We Actually Really Do Need Federal Money

Here are the top-6 most read stories on Philly.com as of Monday morning:

• Body of triathelete recovered and identified
• Bam Margera testifies at hearing about attack outside his club
• Pit bull found savagely killed in Northeast Philly
• Wife and lover charged in husband's death
• Delco triathlete feared dead in Schuylkill River
• Two lovers, a plot, and murder

Which is only to say: we really need more money, community services, and police, not less.

Not among the most viewed articles on Philly.com as of Monday morning was this article about how fucked PA and NJ are because of the shameful decision by Republicans and Ben Nelson to filibuster the tax-extender bill in the Senate, which:

would reauthorize extended unemployment benefits for people out of work for six months or longer, would protect doctors from a 21 percent pay cut for seeing Medicare patients, and would provide billions in aid to state Medicaid programs.

This awesomeness, it seems, is causing all sorts of $850 million fun in Harrisburg:

the lack of federal money will force more painful cuts to programs, including mental-health and children's services, whose funding has already been eviscerated the last few years.

Not receiving the federal Medicaid funding "would be devastating," said Tim Allwein, assistant executive director of governmental and member relations for the Pennsylvania School Boards Association.

School districts in Pennsylvania, he said, would likely lose the extra money Gov. Rendell is proposing for basic education, leaving them to raise taxes or slash programs and teaching jobs.

Rendell had one word last week to describe the impact on the state budget should the Medicaid money be permanently axed: Armageddon.

Hyperbole aside, this is sweet, huh? But it could be worse. We could be living in New Jersey, where conservative messiah Chris Christie has decided to compound the above problems by trying to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit--that is, raise taxes by $45 million on 485,000 families who have children and make under $48,000 a year. And this is after vetoing a small tax surcharge on 16,000 New Jersey millionaires because "another tax increase will punish the state’s struggling small businesses and set our economy further back from recovery."

I happen to agree that raising taxes right now is a really terrible idea, which is why Christie shouldn't do it and why the Senate should get off its ass and save our states.