The first part of this week I am attending the annual State Fiscal Policy Conference organized by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. While most of the conference sessions focus on the fiscal challenges facing state governments – and the need to pursue balanced and fiscally responsible approaches to preserving core public services in these difficult times – the opening plenary featured an informative and convincingly-argued talk on the prospects for the national economy by Mark Zandi, the chief economist for Moody’s Analytics and one of the nation’s most perceptive and widely-respected economic policy analysts. In recent years. Zandi has gained particular prominence both as an adviser to the McCain campaign during the 2008 Presidential election and as co-author, along with former Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Alan Binder, of an important report this past summer that found that federal stimulus measures had a huge and positive impact in turning around the economony and averting a full-scale Depression.

Zandi’s talk, which he titled “Struggling to Hit Escape Velocity,” made three major points about  the economy. The first was that the economic recovery, which had been gathering steam in late 2009 as a result of the spending and tax cut provisions of the stimulus bill passed by Congress in February 2009, has lost momentum over the past six months. Real GDP, which grew 3.3 percent in the second half of 2009, slowed to 2.7 percent in the first half of 2010 and is on pace to grow just 2.0 percent in the second half of this year. This is “painfully slow growth” which will not be enough to forestall further increases in the unemployment rate, which he expects to creep back above double digits in 2011. Zandi identifies two main culprits for the slackening economy: the declining economic impact of the stimulus package and the European debt crisis of earlier this year, which battered stock prices,  reversed growing business and consumer confidence, and slowed private sector hiring.  Although the European crisis now seems to be over, Zandi believes it set back the American recovery by a good six to 12 months. Read the rest of this entry »

From time to time, we use the OK Policy blog to post submissions we receive from Oklahomans who have interesting perspectives on important policy issues for the state. This entry is from John F. Gajda,  Executive Director of TARC, an organization that advocates for the rights of citizens with developmental disabilities.

It’s hard to read a newspaper or listen to a local news programs without hearing about new or planned funding cuts for services provided by Oklahoma state and local governments.

As advocates for people with developmental disabilities and their families, TARC is concerned about how changes in state funding will impact services for these individuals.

The Developmental Disabilities Service Division (DDSD) of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services (OKDHS) is the largest provider of services to individuals with developmental disabilities in Oklahoma. When talking about cuts to the OKDHS budget it is easy for the needs of the people served by DDSD to not receive much attention. Cuts of the magnitude currently being proposed for OKDHS in State Fiscal Year (SFY) ’11 must, however, trickle down to DDSD and directly impact the lives of thousands of individuals. Read the rest of this entry »

With Oklahoma in the midst of what is certain to be a severe and extended fiscal crisis, protecting core public services in every area of state government from deep and painful budget cuts poses a great challenge. However, protecting the budget of Medicaid, the main health insurance program for low-income children, seniors, pregnant women, and persons with disabilities, will present policymakers with special difficulties.

As noted in a recent fact sheet from the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, state Medicaid budgets face two distinct dilemmas: “the crunch” and “the cliff”. The crunch refers to the surge in Medicaid enrollment and spending associated with the economic downturn, as those losing jobs and access to employer-based coverage turn to Medicaid for coverage. Nationally, the Kaiser Commission found that total Medicaid spending growth averaged 7.9 percent across all states in FY 2009, the highest rate of growth in six years. As we reported in our last Numbers You Need bulletin, Oklahoma’s SoonerCare (Medicaid) enrollment climbed 8.9 percent between August 2008 and August 2009 and shows no signs of letting up. Read the rest of this entry »