I live in Montgomery County Maryland. Montgomery County is one of the richest counties in the United States with one of the best school system in the nation. Yet the County must cut its budget for the first time in many years. See Montgomery, Prince George's slash budgets.
To get a feeling of the slashes see below.
Maryland's two largest counties (Montgomery and Prince Georges) outlined spending cuts Monday that would reach from children's health clinics to nursing homes, slice tens of millions of dollars in education spending and furlough thousands of public employees.
Leggett (the county executive) also proposed eliminating 232 filled government jobs. Officials said they would try to prevent many of the workers from being laid off by finding them other positions. Leggett wants the county council to pass a buyout plan to nudge workers to retire early. He also called for 10 days of furloughs for non-public safety employees, a step the county had until now avoided.
It calls for cuts across government operations, furloughs of many employees and a budget for schools that is $137 million less than they requested, which comes in below state requirements.
Officials acknowledged that even if the entire package of reductions is approved by the council, the county faces a projected shortfall of more than $200 million for fiscal 2012 and more in later years.
If this is happening in one of the nation's richest counties, I cannot imagine what is happening in the poorer counties. The bottom line is that unemployment will rise in the county. While the county is solidly democratic, this may bode ill for Democratic Representative Chris Van Hollen.
This will be worse for other democratic representatives. Get Health Care passed and get a trillion dollar jobs bill passed. The bill must focus first on states and counties and second on energy, infrastructure, and other issues. Without such a bill the elections in November will be horrific for Democrats.