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 BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) - Louisiana is expecting a $3.7 billion bill from the federal government for the state's share of the hurricane recovery, far exceeding anything the governor had anticipated.
The state is already dealing with its own crippling budget problems, including dramatic jumps in unemployment, business shutdowns and a state budget deficit of nearly $1 billion in tax revenue alone, and the estimate from the Federal Emergency Management Agency was a shock.
"You knew that the bill was coming. You knew that the disaster was large. Nothing could prepare you for that," Gov. Kathleen Blanco's spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said Friday.
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