WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Virginia said on Thursday it will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to hear its challenge to President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, bypassing the appeals process in a rarely used move to try to speed up a definitive ruling on the year-old law.

The Obama administration opposed the move and said the case should follow the regular process, which could put off until 2012 a Supreme Court ruling on the sweeping law that aims to provide more than 30 million uninsured Americans with medical coverage and cracks down on unpopular insurance industry practices.

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Wednesday’s massive winter storm is the latest pain in the budget for U.S. cities and states as it sweeps across the North American continent, freezing finances along the way.

The snow and ice storm has hit some 30 states and a third of the U.S. population, some of whom have gone on their Twitter feeds to dub it “Stormageddon” and “snOMGeddon.”

CHICAGO/WASHINGTON, Feb 2 (Reuters) – Wednesday’s massive
winter storm is the latest pain in the budget for U.S. cities
and states as it sweeps across the North American continent,
freezing finances along the way.

The snow and ice storm has hit some 30 states and a third
of the U.S. population, some of whom have gone on their Twitter
feeds to dub it “Stormageddon” and “snOMGeddon.”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – State tax revenues continued to strengthen at the end of 2010, but even with that improvement the long-term outlook for most states “is still ominous,” the Rockefeller Institute of Government said in a report released on Tuesday.

“State fiscal recovery will be exceptionally slow and much longer compared to the prior recessions,” said the group, which tracks states’ finances and economies.

WASHINGTON, Jan 31 (Reuters) – Prompted by huge state and
local government pension liabilities, the group that oversees
the U.S. municipal bond market has begun looking into greater
disclosure of the problem to protect investors, its chairman
said on Monday.

The billions of dollars owed to public employees’ pensions
is one of the largest problems looming over financially
troubled states following the 2007-2009 recession and years of
low returns on investments by the pension systems.

WASHINGTON, Jan 27 (Reuters) – Some U.S. states face so
much pressure to fund pensions for public employees that it
could hurt their credit ratings, Moody’s Investors Service said
on Thursday.

As concerns grow over the financial health of many states
after the 2007-2009 recession and how they will cut spending to
cope, the ratings agency said its report combined pension and
debt data to rank the liabilities of each state.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Republicans in the Congress have lambasted states for their economic problems and now states are hitting back, telling the federal government to rein in its own deficit.

U.S. Republicans, riding a wave of opposition to government bailouts, have refused to give extra stimulus to states and are pushing them to cut spending to balance budgets. States say Washington must control its own federal budget gap, but not by making states’ financial problems deeper.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Senate Republican leaders said on Tuesday they were considering introducing legislation to allow financially stressed U.S. states to declare bankruptcy, even though the No. 2 Republican in the House of Representatives has rebuffed the idea.

“We’re exploring that as a responsible option,” Senator John Cornyn, who sits on both the Budget and Finance committees, told reporters.

WASHINGTON, Jan 21 (Reuters) – Legislation that would allow
U.S. states to file for bankruptcy will likely be introduced in
Congress within the next month, Newt Gingrich, the former
speaker of the House of Representatives who remains a powerful
figure in the Republican party, told Reuters on Friday.

Although Gingrich, considered responsible for the
“Republican Revolution” of the 1990′s that brought his party to
power in Congress, is no longer in office, he has deep ties to
Congress and is frequently named as a potential presidential
contender in 2012.

WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – Mayors of U.S. cities still
caught in the recession sought to assure the public and
investors in the $2.8 trillion municipal bond market on
Wednesday that they will do everything to avoid defaults and
bankruptcy.

Attendees at the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of
Mayors in Washington emphasized pension reform as key to
shoring up their finances.