House Passes General Fund With Extreme Cuts
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The state is one step closer to enacting extreme cuts proposed by lawmakers.
The house passed a version of the general fund budget today that doesn’t have any new taxes or revenue.
This is very similar to what we saw come out of committee last week.
Even though it passed, no one was happy with the bill today.
The best case scenario for an agency in this budget is a 5 percent cut. That’s what medicaid, mental health, corrections, and department of human resources are all looking at. Everyone else is stuck with a 9 percent cut.
Representative Steve Clouse chairs the general fund budget committee, and he says there’s not much left to cut.
“We don’t have anymore fluff in the general fund budget. It’s all a neccessity at this point so if you take from one to give to another it’s going to hurt any which way you look at it,” said Clouse.
The Black Democratic Caucus brought their own version of the budget to the floor that did exactly that and moved some items around. It didn’t get passed but Representative John Knight says you can’t just make up money to fix the problem.
“The bottom line is revenue versus expenses. If you don’t have the revenue you’ve got to cut expenses. Then the question is where do you cut, what will you cut, what are your priorities in state government. Some people say we’ll come back in a special session. I believe we ought to address the issue while we’re in a regular session,” said Knight.
That general fund budget now goes to the senate, where President Pro Tem Del Marsh has been pretty adamant that he won’t include any tax increases.
Lawmakers only have seven meeting days left in the regular session.
