Memo: A Clean Jumpstart to Rebuild State Economies Voters Support Flexible Aid for Cities and States
By Ethan Winter, Jason Ganz, and Julian Brave NoiseCat
Executive Summary
Voters support the federal government providing roughly $1 trillion in aid to states by a 55 percentage point margin.
Voters want federal aid to states to be flexible and not just limited to coronavirus-related expenses by a 43 percentage point margin.
The coronavirus crisis has taken a sledgehammer to state budgets. Business closures have plummeted tax revenue at the exact same moment that expenditures are spiking. This is important because, as Mary Williams Walsh notes in the New York Times, in the United States’ federal system, “States provide most of America’s public health, education and policing services, and a lot of its highways, mass transit systems and waterworks.” Already, some states are considering painful spending cuts.
