OCPA in The Oklahoman: Government spending continues to climb in Oklahoma

February 20, 2013

In a column published on Sunday in The Oklahoman, I discussed the continued growth in state spending (in particular, the skyrocketing growth of Oklahoma’s Medicaid budget) and the fact that tax cuts aren’t hurting growth in spending. Some highlights:

• Spending has grown every year since 2001—in spite of two recessions
• Despite a net decrease of $564 million in federal grants, total state spending increased
• Appropriations account for only 39 percent of state spending
• Federal grants used by the state were $6.935 billion, equaling 40.2 percent of total revenues
• Even in a year when state personal income taxes were cut, state tax collections grew by $883 million from fiscal years 2011 to 2012
• The state set a record for net sales tax collections and total tax collections
• State spending on health services (mostly Medicaid) has grown from $3.14 billion in fiscal 2005 to $5.436 billion in 2012—an increase of 72.9 percent
• More than 1 million Oklahomans were enrolled in Medicaid in 2012, compared to approximately 393,100 in 2000
• Medicaid covers 64 percent of the births in Oklahoma
• Medicaid covered 72.9 percent of Oklahoma's children younger than age 5 at some point in fiscal 2012

I encourage you to read the column here, and to share it with your friends via email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. To get government spending under control, we still have a lot of work to do.