This is the Kiedo Daily Podcast for Monday, May 4, 2020.

I'm Caleb Brown.

States looking for a bailout from the feds now face scrutiny

for bad fiscal management before the outbreak.

To the extent that a bailout is on the table, what might it look like?

And if it's really not on the table, what are some paths forward for states that had poor

management before the crisis.

Jonathan Williams is chief economist at the American Legislative Exchange Council, we spoke

last week.

As the coronavirus outbreak took hold, there was a pretty precipitous decline in economic

activity.

Some of that may have been driven by orders of governors and other officials to close restaurants, to close bars, to telling people

to essentially stay at home.

So what do you make of this idea of the federal government

essentially making up the gap for a lot of that lost revenue in the form of

some sort of assistance or bailout?

Well, first of all, I think it's important to remember that the federal government already

has sent a good deal of money to states in the first three rounds of federal packages that have been passed out of Congress

signed a law by President Trump sent in the course of hundreds of billions of dollars to state and

local governments to help make them whole and cover health

care expenditures as it relates to the COVID-19 crisis.

Of course on top of that you have the Federal Reserve action of liquidity as well as the idea that they would buy state and local debt

...