The thing is, I don’t think anyone should doubt that the federal government will ultimately help Ohio (and Michigan, and North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). The Republican Senators from those states will insist on it, and if the Senate and the House pass a bill to aid the states, Trump will sign it.
Hopefully. Unfortunately, the state can’t place their hopes on the whims of the toddler in chief and the budget is required to be balanced per the state Constitution. We probably shouldn’t open the door of letting the GOP ignore the Constitution.
It’s a shit situation and I’d prefer they didn’t cut funding to education, especially since the local universities were already having to make cuts before the announcement. However, everyone took it in the shorts here except for corrections - and they’re managing the majority of the state’s outbreaks right now. The story if corrections funding was cut would be that the governor is racist for leaving the disproportionately poor and minority inmate populations to die out.
Hopefully education will have lower costs with less people using the facilities and will be able to weather the cuts. Then we can start rightfully complaining when tax revenues rebound and the state magically doesn’t have the funding available for education.
In higher ed most of the budget is salaries. Cutting $100 million without massive layoffs leads to really weird and draconian cuts to services and operating expenses. Probably true in most school systems as well.
Why the hell would you cut Medicaid at a time like this?
Because Republicans are the mustache twirling villains from the kids shows we used to watch?
Gotta cut something or raise taxes. Probably both in the harder hit states. I’m mildly sympathetic as tax increases are incredibly difficult to do short term and nothing makes state legislators fight like trying to solve a tax issue. Spending cuts are just for a year, new taxes are forever, etc.
It’s unfortunate and unjust, but I think the majority of states (if not all) are going to face the need to make hard spending cuts due to COVID-19.
AWS260
4763
It’s not just the GOP. Andrew Cuomo, my governor, is also pushing through state Medicaid cuts.
I think they must be seeing advance tax forecasts, and are desperately trying to prepare for the disastrous budget shortfalls.
Here’s the Ohio budget in a nifty Tableau dashboard:
https://interactivebudget.ohio.gov/Budgets/default.aspx
$776m was cut, including the following:
- $300 million in funding to K-12 public schools;
- $210 million in state Medicaid payments;
- $110 million from funding to the state’s higher education institutions; and
- $100 million from state agencies, including the governor’s office.
Medicaid got off comparatively light, all things considered.
Cuomo routinely talks about a deficit of $5B to $15B for this year. He has asked higher ed to prepare budget cut budgets ranging from 5% to 50% in 10% intervals. He also berates Cocaine Mitch and the feds for not helping with state budget deficits caused by the virus and the shutdown.
Funny how Trump talks about letting states that are “poorly run” go broke, meanwhile both New York and Ohio feed more into the Federal budget in tax revenue than they take back out, while Kentucky, Florida, South Carolina, North Dakota, Louisiana, etc all pull out several times more than they contribute. Welfare queens and Socialism indeed…it’s always projection with the GOP, always.
CraigM
4768
Unless something drastic has changed, then this is not true for Ohio. I’ve typically seen it in the middle, to upper half, in terms of dollars received per dollars sent.
In fact looking at things I can’t find any evidence that at any point in the last decade at least that Ohio paid more federal taxes than it received in federal spending.
Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Conneticut, Massachusets, California tend to be fairly stable in the donor category. Other states are varying from year to year. Ohio seems fairly stable in the $1.30-1.70 range.
Page 13 for the table.
I checked multiple sources, and all verify the general numbers. CAlifornia is, for the first time I recall, actually slightly positive.
I pulled my info from these charts at The Atlantic showing which states get the most return versus least return on Federal tax dollars.
According to that chart,. there are only 14 donor states?
Hell yeah, break things up, we can create the United States of Cha-Ching!
CraigM
4771
Interesting. I hadn’t seen those 2014 numbers, or maybe I just ignore Ohio in them in favor of noting Illinois always subsidizes our neighbors Missouri and Indiana heavily.
So I’ll grant my no evidence this decade statement is wrong.
So they were in 2014, but not in the last few years. It is certainly possible, as those numbers shift from year to year due to various contracts and grants.
Hell California is slightly positive this year, for the first time I recall. Though that largely can be chalked up to increased deficits predicated on tax cuts rather than increased spending to California.
I would be interested in a year to year chart for all the states, seeing how it evolved over time. Some things are constant, Illinois and Connecticut are always heavily subsidizing other states even in these days of 1.20 in federal spending per dollar received nationally
KevinC
4772
What kind of shithole president / party tries to pit states against each other in a time like this? Really, during a pandemic you’re going to play Blue State / Red State when it’s the blue states that largely fund the federal government?
I know this isn’t surprising but it sure is disgusting.
Classing states as producers or takers isn’t much different from classing people as producers or takers. It’s the same (wrong) argument that fiscal transfers ought to be about merit rather than about social utility. Countries and states will have rich regions and poor ones, and the poor ones will sometimes be poor through no fault of their own, but a policy of making them live on their own income will certainly entrench that poverty. How not?
CraigM
4774
That’s a separate conversation. But you should be well aware what the narrative is, and has been, from the conservative side for decades.
That it is the high tax liberal states/ cities being subsidized by the hard work of red/ rural communities.
I am pointing out the facts that this is not only inaccurate, it is the exact opposite of reality.
And while I support making sure poor people in Alabama have access to medical care and infrastructure, at some point I feel we should let them be the dog that catches the car.
You oppose federal programs and state subsidies? Well how do you like it once you realize your shitty ass state no longer has a post office, roads, schools, public utilities, etc and are reverted to third world status?
If it weren’t for the mass suffering this would cause for people who do not advocate these things, I would be all in favor of punishing those hypocritical ‘takers’.
I am 100% willing to concede that you’re probably right and Ohio usually sucks off the Federal dole (after all, we’ve been a GOP state for years now) and that maybe we just got lucky in 2014. I did the bare minimum of research before posting, Googling something like “Which states get the most Federal tax money” or similar, and ran with what I found in the Atlantic article. Pretty sure that bare minimum qualifies me to be a CNN or MSNBC political consultant, and over-qualifies me for Fox News. ;-)
