STATEMENT: Governor Fallin’s budget would make bad situation worse

Oklahoma Policy Institute released the following statement in response to Governor Fallin’s 2015 state budget proposal:

Oklahoma already faces a difficult challenge this year to balance the budget without harming important services. Governor Fallin’s proposed budget takes a bad situation and makes it worse.

As Governor Fallin calls for another tax cut, the budget is already $572 million below FY 2009 after inflation. Oklahoma has jumped from a budget shortfall in a national recession to an equally serious shortfall of our own creation.

Especially troubling is that at a time when Medicaid needs new funding just to continue existing services, the governor suggests cutting state funding for Medicaid while continuing to refuse federal funds. This would be devastating for Oklahoma’s most vulnerable children, seniors, and disabled Oklahomans, as well as a blow to rural hospitals and other health care providers throughout the state.

The only way to avoid devastating cuts this session is to preserve existing revenues and reign in unnecessary and increasingly unaffordable tax breaks, starting with those for horizontal drilling.