Budget & Tax
Jonathan Small | June 16, 2017
Lessons from Illinois
Jonathan Small
Oklahoma just completed, with much gnashing of teeth and moaning, a budget year with a shortfall of nearly $1 billion. Imagine, though, facing deficits that total $30 billion or more – and that’s before you even start discussing a $250 billion pension debt.
Such is the case with Illinois, where lawmakers haven’t even managed to pass a budget since 2015, where they have failed to balance the state budget every year since 2001, and where annual tax increases have failed miserably to keep the state afloat.
Read the rest over on The Journal Record.
Jonathan Small
President
Jonathan Small, C.P.A., serves as President and joined the staff in December of 2010. Previously, Jonathan served as a budget analyst for the Oklahoma Office of State Finance, as a fiscal policy analyst and research analyst for the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and as director of government affairs for the Oklahoma Insurance Department. Small’s work includes co-authoring “Economics 101” with Dr. Arthur Laffer and Dr. Wayne Winegarden, and his policy expertise has been referenced by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, National Review, the L.A. Times, The Hill, the Wall Street Journal and the Huffington Post. His weekly column “Free Market Friday” is published by the Journal Record and syndicated in 27 markets. A recipient of the American Legislative Exchange Council’s prestigious Private Sector Member of the Year award, Small is nationally recognized for his work to promote free markets, limited government and innovative public policy reforms. Jonathan holds a B.A. in Accounting from the University of Central Oklahoma and is a Certified Public Accountant.