The state of state budgets continues to deteriorate around the country. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released another update yesterday to their increasingly disturbing analysis, which now shows that 31 states are anticipating budget problems in 2009, with 27 projecting a budget shortfall. We continue to reiterate that this is pretty bad news as state budgets are far less flexible than the federal budget and usually are legally prohibited from running a deficit. From the CBPP update: 31 states anticipate budget problems. Of those:

Doing the Veto-Voodoo Dance It's vetoes ("veti" in Latin?) gone wild this week at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, with President Bush vetoing the Farm bill this afternoon, and issuing formal veto threats against the war funding bill cleared last week by the Senate Appropriations Committee and, now, against the House extenders package, H.R. 6049 -- the Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008.

Shawn Fremstad posted yesterday on a new paper released this month by John Schmitt over at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. The paper studies the impact unions have on income and has some interesting findings:

The Tax Policy Center, a joint venture of the Urban Institute and Brookings Institution, has published two tesitmonies from a recent Senate Finance Committee hearing on overhaul of the U.S. tax code: A Blueprint for Tax Reform and Health Reform Leonard Burman