Confusion Over State Impact of Stimulus Bill

By Odette Yousef

Atlanta, GA – Confusion is rampant among state and local officials about how the stimulus package, signed today by President Barack Obama, will impact the state. Nearly everybody agrees, it'll help. But as WABE's Odette Yousef reports, nobody knows who it'll help, or how much.

Saxby Chambliss, one of Georgia's U.S. Senators, was at the state capitol today. When reporters asked about the stimulus bill, he prefaced his answer with:

SAXBY: I don't know of anybody who's read the bill yet.

Including himself.

That's partly because the bill is 1000 pages long, but also, as Alan Essig of the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute points out, it's just really complicated:

ESSIG: It's not that the state gets one check. There's probably about a doxen different federal funding sources that we're getting increased funds from. And each of those fund sources has different rules, regulations, guidances on how to use the funds and what to use the funds for.

Senator Chambliss estimates that Georgia would receive between $5 and $6 billion from the package. But Essig warns that not all of that can help to relieve the state's current $2 billion deficit - or the deficit for the year after:

ESSIG: We're facing, over the next two fiscal years - fiscal year 2009 and fiscal year '10, probably a combined deficit of $5-6 billion, and what we're getting from the feds is probably $3 billion.

Essig says the package will strengthen Georgia's safety net programs - unemployment benefits and Medicaid, and maybe it'll help slow the job hemorrhage. But Labor Commissioner Michael Thurmond says he doesn't expect any significant changes in the state's bleak job outlook:

THURMOND: Right now, we're experiencing significant job losses. Thousand are filing for unemployment benefits, and I don't see that changing in the near term.

The White House released state-by-state estimates of how many jobs the stimulus would create or save over two years. In Georgia, it's 107 thousand -- a number that Thurmond calls a "guesstimate" at best.

In January, 120 thousand Georgians filed first-time claims for unemployment benefits.

Odette Yousef, WABE News.