Federal funding
Georgia counts on federal funding for about one-third of its budget. The money pays for things like health and nursing care, and school lunches. Below are the top areas of federal spending in the fiscal 2014 state budget:
1. Medical assistance programs, such as nursing home stays and health care for the poor: $6.3 billion
2. Food stamps: $2.89 billion
3. Student loan program: $1.65 billion
4. Unemployment benefits: $1.2 billion
5. Highway planning and construction: $1.15 billion
6. Pell Grants to college students: $748.7 million
7. School lunch program: $641 million
8. Grants to help improve academic achievement for students from low-income families: $492 million
9. PeachCare health insurance for children from low-income families: $340 million
10. Temporary Assistance for Needy Families: $320 million
Source: Office of Planning and Budget
Track legislation
The General Assembly is entering the busiest part of the legislative session. To see what’s passed and what has failed, check out The Atlanta Journal-Constitution at http://legislativenavigator.myajc.com/.
Without a wink of irony Wednesday, the state Senate once again demanded a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution and lambasted Congress for running up the national debt.
The vote came days before the same Senate will approve a state budget using an increasingly huge chunk of federal spending to pay for projects and programs such as health care, road building and school lunches.
Passing measures that “tell the United States Congress what to do” about its spending habits (in the words of Lt. Gov. Casey Cagle) have become an annual rite of passage for Georgia’s GOP-led Legislature, as party leaders play to a conservative base without any likely consequences.
Federal funds account for more than a quarter of the $40 billion the state spends each year, a fact generally not acknowledged in the annual federal deficit debate. The nonbinding Senate Resolution 155 passed on a party-line vote of 37-17.
"I believe it's time to get our spending house in order," said its sponsor, state Sen. Judson Hill, R-Marietta, a frequent critic of federal spending.
But others say it’s little more than a political sideshow.
“It’s just grandstanding,” said Dan Lee, a former Republican state senator who now lobbies at the state Capitol. “In times past, it’s been because Democrats controlled things. In the past, when Democrats controlled the state Capitol, Republicans would bring it forward to make this crowd (in Atlanta) look bad and that crowd (in Washington) look bad.”
Lee’s not sure why the General Assembly would do it now that Republicans control both the state Capitol and Congress.
State politicians have long pointed a finger at Washington, portraying the federal government as a den of profligate spenders. Lawmakers have debated and, in some cases, approved measures calling for a balanced budget constitutional amendment for many years.
Last year, with elections looming and inspiration from national conservative groups and a best-selling book, the push accelerated. The American Legislative Exchange Council, backed largely by corporate contributions, produced a manual telling lawmakers the exact language they should use in their bills.
About a dozen measures were filed last year calling for or approving the mechanisms for constitutional conventions or compacts to force the federal government to balance the budget.
Most of those same legislators also back state budgets that include billions of dollars in federal funding to provide health care to the poor, pay for the elderly to stay in nursing homes, feed poor children in schools, and build roads and bridges. This year’s budget includes more than $12 billion in federal money, up about $300 million from the previous year.
In recent years, the General Assembly has pumped up its take of federal matching funds by instituting “provider fees” for hospitals and nursing homes reimbursed under Medicaid, the largest federally funded program in the state. Nursing homes and hospitals pay fees, and in return, the debt-ridden federal government returns nearly twice as much for programs that benefit nursing homes and hospitals.
Gov. Nathan Deal and other GOP leaders have likewise been extremely aggressive in recent years lobbying the federal government to contribute hundreds of millions of dollars to the deepening of the Savannah port.
They have not, however, grabbed at every federal dollar. Deal, for instance, has adamantly declined to expand Medicaid under the federal Affordable Care Act because he said it’s too expensive for the state to provide some of its own money as part of the deal. The governor and others have said the federal government cannot be relied upon to provide the funding it promises down the road because of its sad financial shape.
And few if any lawmakers in either party think the nation’s growing, $18 trillion debt is a good thing. Some have estimated the country will be spending more on interest payments than national defense in a few years. The Great Recession and an aging population in some parts of the country have exacerbated the problem, forcing more people onto costly public health care and nursing programs.
Alan Essig, a former state budget analyst and head of the left-leaning Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, said actually cutting out federal spending in Georgia “would be devastating.”
“We’d either have to replace it with state money by increasing taxes dramatically or eliminate health care for 1.8 million people and cut $1.2 billion in education,” he said. “We wouldn’t be able to build roads, and we’d have no child welfare or elderly programs.”
Essig called the yearly legislation urging Congress to balance the federal budget an easy vote for conservatives in the General Assembly.
“I think it’s ideological, and it’s an easy vote for the ideological base because it has no impact,” Essig said. “You get to say you are against federal funds and you get to send that message without actually having federal funds cut. It’s purely political.”
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