Senators from both parties are pushing to free up billions of dollars for federal highway projects, as Congress looks to infrastructure investment to combat double-digit unemployment, according to the Wall Street Journal. Federal highway funds to states could drop by an average of $1 billion a month, or 30 percent, from year-ago levels without a change in the law to fix a technicality, the paper reports.

Here’s more dire news from California. The Golden State may be known as the cradle of computer innovation, but several state agencies can’t get their computers to perform essential functions, despite hundreds of millions of dollars in cost overruns for repair and upgrade work, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Although taxpayer money has been flowing to corporate consultants and software overhauls, some computer systems are on the verge of collapse, and some replacement projects are years behind schedule or have been scrapped because they didn’t work.

The antiquated systems have even been cited by top finance officials as a contributing factor in the difficulty the state has managing its money. A lack of shared databases results in a sluggish information flow that can hamper financial decision-making. Budget officials may have trouble obtaining accurate, up-to-date numbers, and the information lag can hinder purchasing and investment decisions.

The computer and software malfunctions just exacerbate a terrible budgetary situation for California, which is staring at a $21 billion shortfall over this year and next.

New York, meanwhile, may face a costly dilemma: it’s bond rating may be in peril depending on what decisions it makes to close this year’s budgetary shortfall, reports the Albany Times-Union. If bond rating agencies downgrade New York’s bond rating, that will make borrowing more expensive because the state is seen as a bigger risk.

Just over the New York border, Pennsylvania is considering something it’s never done before: contracting with another state or states to board as many as 2,000 convicted criminals, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The United States government is financing its more than trillion-dollar-a-year borrowing with i.o.u.’s on terms that seem too good to be true. And they are, reports the New York Times.

Treasury officials now face a trifecta of headaches: a mountain of new debt, a balloon of short-term borrowings that come due in the months ahead, and interest rates that are sure to climb back to normal as soon as the Federal Reserve decides that the emergency has passed.

The rising interest rates over the next decade could push the country’s debt service payment to $700 billion a year, the paper reports.

Finally, the militia movement is on the rise again. The Associated Press has a story today about the growth of militias in Alaska as a microcosm of what’s going on across the country. “Norm Olson’s militia is minuscule at the moment, but there has been a resurgence of the militia movement nationwide, in part coinciding with the advent of the Obama administration,” the AP story says. “At least 50 new right-wing militia groups have been identified by the Montgomery, Ala.-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization. All have formed within the last two years, many spreading their speeches and combat exercises on YouTube.”