State Taxpayers Providing Relief to Military Families
By SHAILA DEWAN

Taxpayers can donate their refunds in many states to the homeless, to victims of child abuse, to protecting endangered species or to a group of needy people whose taxpayer-financed salaries do not always make ends meet - military families.

... "It's because Congress has failed to set a safety net for military families that lose heads of household," said Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, which recently added $250,000 life insurance policies for its National Guard soldiers to augment the $12,000 federal death benefit. "And the states are stepping in with humanitarian initiatives."

Report: States getting stuck with $30 billion federal tab
By Kathleen Hunter, Stateline.org Staff Writer

The federal government will force states to pick up an extra $30 billion in expenses in fiscal 2006, mostly for education programs that Congress passed without providing enough resources to pay for them, the National Conference of State Legislatures predicted in a report released today (March 8).

...Its latest estimates are that federal programs shifted $25.7 billion in costs to states in fiscal 2004 and $25.9 billion in fiscal 2005, comprising 5 percent of states' general revenues in each of those years. Bush's latest budget proposal would raise the burden of federal mandates even higher, NCSL predicted.