PolicyGuy

Friday, June 27, 2003


A Retreat in State Spending
Stateline.org reports that for the first time in 20 years, state fiscal spending will "shrink from one fiscal year to the next." Does this mean that government is being slashed and the tax burden is shrinking? Not exactly. As the story notes, "governors in 29 states proposing $17.5 billion in revenue increases. If enacted, this would be the largest total state tax increase since 1979."

Medicaid has in the last year or so finally gotten attention from policy analysts. It's bad health care, and it's also hideously expensive (these two facts are tied together by the fact that it's a government program.) Speaking of Medicaid, the executive director of the National Governors Association says ""It is now becoming, we would argue, the Pac-Man of state government. Which means it is eating up each additional dollar that can be generated in revenues."

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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve

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