Federal spending by state agencies has increased since the start of the Great Recession. Below are some of the agencies that receive federal funding:
Departments
Fiscal 2008
*Fiscal 2015
Community Health (Medicaid and Peachcare)
$5.04 billion
$6.64 billion
Education
$1.55 billion
$1.64 billion
Transportation
$975 million
$1.21 billion
Community Affairs
$167 million
$173 million
Public Safety
$26.8 million
$32.3 million
*Budgeted spending for fiscal 2015 budget. Figures may go up in mid-year budget.
Source: State budget documents
Republican lawmakers played to their political base this re-election year session by approving at least five measures aimed at forcing the federal government to balance its budget.
But most of those same legislators also voted for a state budget that includes $12.1 billion in federal money during the upcoming year, up about $300 million from 2014, according to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution analysis.
The votes highlight a fundamental contradiction: Lawmakers don’t want the federal government to spend more money, but they know the state can’t survive without it.
Federal money goes for everything from health care, food and housing assistance, to road-building and public safety programs. It accounts for about 30 percent of the state budget that Gov. Nathan Deal will sign this month.
"That's always been a difficult conundrum for fiscal conservatives to say they are for cutting federal spending," said Kelly McCutchen, president of the free-market Georgia Public Policy Foundation. "There are a large group of people (in states) who say we need to get our fair share."
The state's reliance on federal money, especially for health care programs, has only grown since the Great Recession.
“When it comes down to it, they say ‘I want you to cut (federal) spending, but I don’t want you to cut my spending,’ ” said Bill Tomlinson, a retired state budget director. “All my projects are good ones.”
Georgia’s constitution mandates a balanced state budget. The one Deal will sign for fiscal 2015 — which begins July 1 — will spend about $42.3 billion overall, including state and federal funds.
State politicians have long pointed a crooked finger at Washington, portraying the federal government as a den of profligate spenders. With a debt of more than $17 trillion and growing, they say it deserves all the criticism it gets.
Lawmakers have debated and, in some cases, approved measures calling for a balanced budget constitutional amendment for many years.
But this 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, has a manual telling lawmakers the exact language they should should use in their bills.
About a dozen measures were filed calling for or approving the mechanisms for constitutional conventions or compacts to force the federal government to balance the budget. There were so many that at one point late in the session, a weary Republican senator asked how many more his leadership planned to approve.
Among those was Senate Resolution 371, which calls on Congress to call a constitutional convention to consider a balanced budget amendment. Several other states have passed similar requests, with two-thirds necessary to require the convention be called. Some of the other resolutions and bills would add other proposed constitutional amendments, such as term limits for congressmen.
One resolution's preamble read, "Whereas the federal government has created national debt through improper and imprudent spending… and whereas the federal government has invaded the legitimate roles of the states through the manipulative process of federal mandates, most of which are unfunded to a great extent …."
Rep. Buzz Brockway, R-Lawrenceville, who co-sponsored a bill detailing how delegates to a constitutional convention would be selected, said the issue is coming to the forefront now because of the national push by conservative groups, because some Tea Party activists are strongly on board — and because it plays to voters.
“It is good politics if you are in a primary with a Republican primary challenge to say, ‘I’ve taken steps to reign in Washington,” said Brockway, who does not face primary opposition this year.
But he added, “I think, for me, we are spending too much. I am hoping out of this we have a serious national discussion about what we are going to do.”
Sen. Josh McKoon, R-Columbus, who has pushed balanced budget legislation in the past, said some of the more recent inspiration to tackle the issue came from Mark R. Levin’s book, “The Liberty Amendments,” published last year. Those proposed amendments include ones to limit federal bureaucracy, to impose term limits on Congress and members of the U.S. Supreme Court and to return to the days when U.S. senators were chosen by state lawmakers, not voters.
McKoon said the idea behind the conventions is that the country is “out of options” in dealing with issues like the rising federal debt. Congress is simply incapable of dealing with it, the thinking goes.
“We all believe that the federal government needs to adhere to the same balanced budget that we expect every state government to have,” he said.
Maximizing federal spending
When they controlled the Legislature, Democrats under the iron fist of former House Speaker Tom Murphy generally sought to maximize federal dollars sent to Georgia by anteing up the local state match that was required to get it.
Republicans have done much the same.
In recent years, Georgia 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 were scheduled to pay $409 million in such fees this year. In return, the debt-ridden federal government would return $791 million for the programs.
Without that federal money, the state would have faced a massive shortfall that could have caused some rural hospitals and nursing homes to close. Still, the renewal of the hospital fee last year was a sticky enough subject that the Legislature agreed to hand over the responsibility of renewing it to the community health agency. That way, lawmakers avoided voting on a measure that could be labeled a tax increase.
But last year Deal and many other GOP lawmakers refused to expand Medicaid as part of the federal Affordable Care Act even though it would have resulted in billions more in federal dollars to the program. At least 650,000 more Georgians would be added to the rolls, but Deal said the state's share of the cost would be too great.
Deal and other GOP leaders have taken a different tact regarding federal funding for the deepening of the Savannah port. They've aggressively sought federal assistance for the project and slammed the Obama administration for not including $400 million in his latest federal budget proposal to fund it.
“I don’t think it’s hypocritical to say we want a balanced (federal) budget but on the other hand we want the federal government to partner with states,” McKoon said.
Donald J. Boyd, a senior fellow and government fiscal expert at the Rockefeller Institute of Government in Albany, N.Y., said federal funds make up about a third of spending in states nationally. That doesn't include federal spending on things like military bases, that don't go through state government but benefit state economies.
“The extent to which states rely on federal spending is enormous,” Boyd said.
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