The Tax Foundation reminds us that South Dakota continues to stay afloat on red-state moocherism. Our conservative one-party state relies on the federal government for a greater percentage of its general revenues than all but three other states:
South Dakota got 40.8% of its general fund revenues from Uncle Sam in Fiscal Year 2012. Only Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi got bigger portions of their pie from the feds.
When I reported the Tax Foundation's figures on this topic two years ago, South Dakota was at 45.56%. Governor Dennis Daugaard's proposed FY2016 budget brings that federal percentage down to 38.9%. Gee, Pastor Hickey: it looks like Governor Daugaard is already soft-landing us for that Long Economic Winter! (See Rev. Hickey's September 14–20, 2014, podcasts on the topic.)
Seems this is more evidence to proof Rounds a leftist, and helps destroy the premise of the previous post. So instead of calling it "red-state moocherism", it would be more correct to call it "red-state communism" as is Soviet Red. After all, we are using the Soviet's economic and mind control methods.
As I posted on Twitter the other day, this does not seem to back up our stance that we can't take money for ACA because we don't trust the Feds to deliver!
Astutely observed, Mike! We trust the feds to keep running the military, and we demand that they keep stationing soldiers and planes and other toys at Ellsworth to protect Rapid City's job base. We can trust the feds to keep funding the ACA and Medicaid.
Cory,
You do get the irony that on one hand you criticize the % of our budget from the feds but also advocate expanding Medicaid, children welfare assistance, doing more labor training, more unemployment services, pass through to college students, build roads or use for certain Titles for K-12 students. These alone total over 80% of the federal funds in our budget.
South Dakota: Land of Infinite Volution.
Troy, I think you may have missed the point. While Cory can certainly correct me if I am wrong, but it seemed to me that Cory was not criticizing our state for taking federal money, rather, he was pointing out the hypocrisy of our elected representatives who claim to oppose federal spending, while "wink, wink" taking as much federal money as possible.
Well done, BCB.