STARKVILLE – Should Mississippi become the third state – after Georgia and Alaska – to sign onto a plan to call a constitutional convention to force Congress to balance the federal budget and to require that the states grant Congress permission to raise the federal national debt?
By a vote of 68-51, the Mississippi House of Representatives has expressed their will that Mississippi follow that path. The state Senate passed the bill in February by a vote of 30-19 with three abstentions. The bill now is headed to Gov. Phil Bryant’s desk and it is difficult to imagine that he will not sign it into law.
Sid Salter
In selling the bill to the House, House Speaker Pro Tem Greg Snowden, R-Meridian, offered the argument that the U.S. is only a few years from fiscal insolvency.
“It is essentially the situation Greece was in a couple of years ago,” Snowden said. “I have no confidence whatsoever that with a Republican president, this would be addressed. Congress cannot solve the problem. The interest on our debt is unsustainable.”
The legislation is the brainchild of conservative groups like the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Goldwater Institute. The goal is to get three-fourths of the states to call a constitutional convention in order to implement constitutional amendments that would set in place the desired conservative fiscal mandates.
So, was Snowden snowing his colleagues with his predictions of fiscal gloom and doom? No.
Between the national debt and deficit spending – in which the federal government spends hundreds of billions of dollars more than it takes in from tax revenues and does so by borrowing – and entitlement programs that Congress has failed to manage in a sustainable fashion, Snowden dismal fiscal forecast is spot on.
For FY2013, Mississippi adopted a budget of $18.2 billion. But of that state budget, some 42.9 percent of it was met with federal dollars. Even with that influx of federal dollars, 70 percent of the total Mississippi budget funded public health care, education, highways, agriculture and economic development. Over the last decade, federal revenues as a share of all Mississippi state government revenues increased from just over 35 percent in 2000 to just fewer than 53 percent in 2011.
Specifically, federal funds in Mississippi pay for Medicaid, education, social welfare, and highways. Federal funding pays the lion’s share of government costs for Mississippi’s $7.5 billion agricultural and forestry production in 2012, which provided 29 percent of all Mississippi jobs and 22 percent of the state’s total income.
For public health care, the role of federal spending is most impactful. Three-fourths or more of Medicaid costs in Mississippi are paid by federal tax dollars. And to give a complete perspective, Mississippi puts less into the federal coffers than it takes out as a state. Mississippi taxpayers receive $2.73 back in federal spending for every dollar in federal taxes paid.
Snowden was also forthright in positing that the problems won’t be solved merely by electing a Republican president. Debts and deficits, runaway entitlement programs and mismanagement of Social Security trust funds have been rampant regardless which party controlled Congress or the White House.
Where the train runs off the track in this effort is the reality that if enough other states follow, future Mississippi lawmakers will confront the task of providing present levels of public services without the torrent of federal dollars that currently flow into the state’s coffers to pay for them – or they will face massive, Draconian eliminations or cuts in those services.
The roles of federal dollars in the operation of state government can’t be ignored. In 2000, federal funds were 34.8 percent of state revenues. In 2001, 36.1 percent. In 2002, 39.6 percent. In 2003, 41.5 percent. In 2004, 42.9 percent. In 2005, 43.8 percent. In 2006, 46.9 percent. In 2007, 51.3 percent. In 2008, 46.2 percent. In 2009, 47.5 percent.
In 2010, federal funds were 49.8 percent of state revenues. In 2011, 48.8 percent. In 2012, 45.3 percent. In 2013, 42.9 percent. Over the last 15 years, the federal share of Mississippi’s revenues has increased more than eight percent.
States like Connecticut pay more in federal taxes than they receive in federal spending. The plan Mississippi lawmakers just adopted, one would surmise, would be tailor made for Connecticut. In Mississippi, where citizens get back substantially more in federal spending for every dollar paid in federal taxes, there is likely less enthusiasm.
Whether politically symbolic in an election year or the sign of tough votes to come, it will be very hard for challengers to get to the right of the current Mississippi Legislature.
Sid Salter is a syndicated columnist.
Contact him at 601-507-8004
or sidsalter@sidsalter.com.