As the deadline for raising the nation’s debt ceiling rushes closer, Gov. Nathan Deal is gauging the possible implications to state government.
Deal has ordered state agencies to report which programs might be vulnerable to any loss of federal funding.
If Congress and President Barack Obama don’t reach an agreement to increase the amount of money the government can borrow by Tuesday, some federal programs could see funding dry up. But which programs and how quickly the money would evaporate are unclear.
It would be up to Obama to decide what to fund with actual revenue the government would continue to take in.
Deal spokesman Brian Robinson said the governor wants to understand what the ramifications could be.
“The important part here, the overall point, is we have no reason to believe there would be a disruption in funding,” Robinson said, adding that this is a different scenario than the one the country faced earlier in the year when Congress edged to the brink of shutdown over a budget stalemate.
“There’s no scenario under which all federal funding stops immediately,” Robinson said. “And the federal government has not told any agency that a funding disruption might come. This is all speculative.”
A good example of that speculation is unemployment insurance checks. There have been published reports that should the debt ceiling not be raised, unemployed workers would not receive checks because those stipends are funded 100 percent by the federal government.
But Georgia Labor Commissioner Mark Butler told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that he checked with federal officials Thursday who assured him unemployment checks would still be distributed.
But the possibility still exists that other programs could be affected. Medicaid and Peachcare -- the state-federal programs that provide health insurance to lower-income and disabled Georgians -- are two.
Those programs, Robinson said, “have really high price tags that we’d have to keep an eye on.”
Deal simply wants to know what would be possible and which programs might have to be halted.
Said Robinson: “We are merely being proactive in establishing documents in the agencies that lay out what the agencies’ priorities are going to be in case of a lack of money coming in.”
Some states could risk seeing their bond rating lowered, too, if the ceiling isn't raised. Georgia is one of eight states with the AAA rating, which helps it get lower interest rates when borrowing money. Moody's Investor Services recently said that five states with the top rating could be affected, but Georgia was not one of them.
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