With New Mexico facing budget deficits in excess of $600 million, one might be led to believe by some left-wing advocates that state government simply doesn’t have money to do the basics these days.
James Jimenez of NM Voices for Children blames “tax cuts” (too little money) for everything from the ” backlog of rape kits” to the backlog of applications for medical marijuana ID cards.
The reality is that New Mexico’s government is hardly starved for cash. The State spends far more per-capita than do its neighbors (nearly double what Texas spends). Original data available here, see the chart below as well:
| New Mexico | $8,197 |
| Colorado | $6,048 |
| Oklahoma | $5,637 |
| Arizona | $4,567 |
| Utah | $4,323 |
| Texas | $4,098 |
The author decides to use federal plus state spending (without disclosing he is doing so) to pretend like federal money can be spent on things like processing rape kits.
Maybe he truly believes money that goes towards military bases can be spent on such things, but that shows why you should never hire a lobbyist to do economics.
Military bases? I’m not sure I understand who or what you are critiquing. Military bases are NOT included in the New Mexico budget numbers cited in this posting. Nor are Social Security or Medicaid for that matter. If you google “per capita” state spending, you get results similar to those cited here from a variety of sources including the Kaiser Foundation.
Paul, you spelled my name wrong.
Thank you. Corrected. I look forward to debating and discussing the issues with you in your new role.
What percentage of the monies in the listed expenses are spent on Medicaid, EBT, housing and other subsidies? I believe that we have a larger percentage of residents on welfare than Texas (and a whole lot of other states) so if these things are included it kind of skews the data. According to something I had heard Gov. Martinez say, we do not have enough money to even cover Medicaid.
We do have a lot of residents on welfare. No doubt, I think the answer is to get some of these people off the dole and put them to work. Plenty of fast food joints are hiring these days. Time to get some skills, start paying taxes, and get off the dole.
Martinez, who has been a disappointment, increased Medicaid spending, bought in to Common Core and has consistently avoided asking why we are such a poor State. Taxes are too high, the Rail Runner is a waste of money, business is discouraged, people should be able to feed their own children and any money saving strategies put forth by conservatives are never taken seriously by a socialist democrat party that thinks working people owe them something. We are in this mess because of shoddy governance and bloated welfare spending. Many of us think we have paid enough.