PA Budget Health Relies on Funding Question Mark in DC
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March 1, 2010
HARRISBURG, Pa. - The debate in Washington over the future of financial aid for states through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act - generally known as the stimulus program - will have a major impact here in Pennsylvania, both on health care and on employment. Governor Edward Rendell's proposed $29 billion budget relies on the federal government continuing a higher Medicaid matching rate through 2011. President Obama favors extending the stimulus program, and it's part of some of the health care reform bills, but there's no blessing from Congress yet.
About $850 million is at stake for the state, according to Sharon Ward, executive director of the Pennsylvania Budget and Policy Center.
"Economists estimate that about 900,000 jobs will be lost nationwide if Congress fails to extend federal fiscal relief, and that means that we will have job losses in Pennsylvania."
Ward says Congress holds the cards.
"This is a time where there's a united effort to urge Congress to help states avoid job losses and cuts in health care, by enacting federal fiscal relief."
Without the extension, Ward says, states already in the red like Pennsylvania, will have to make some critical decisions about whether services end, or taxpayers dig deeper.
"It would be a choice between cutting hospitals and nursing homes and cutting health care services to seniors and people with disabilities and families, or raising additional revenue in order to avoid those cuts."
The governors of 43 states from both political parties want the extension.
Conservatives in Congress have labeled the Recovery Act a failure, claiming the corporations that have already received money should be generating more jobs. Vice President Joseph Biden's office, which oversees distribution of Recovery Act dollars, estimates they have helped create or save two million jobs.