When Mark Gordon was sworn in as Governor in 2019, he submitted a budget request under $9 billion. This year, Gordon’s total budget seeks to spend well over $11 billion. In just a few years the state budget has grown roughly 30%.
Has your household budget grown that much?
If state spending continues to increase at this rate, our own projections put us $800 million in the red by 2029 – that’s three short years away.
That reality is why the Joint Appropriations Committee (JAC), now controlled by fiscal conservatives for the first time in decades, is working to slow the growth of government.
But if you relied solely on hysterical media coverage and the online outrage machine of Democrats, you’d think government had been slashed to the bone.
The JAC budget limits runaway government growth by cutting waste while fully funding the necessary functions of government.
Under the conservative JAC budget, snowplow drivers and state troopers receive long-overdue raises.
Vulnerable Wyomingites who rely on developmental disability waivers get additional funding, and the dedicated caregivers who serve them will finally be paid more.
Classroom teachers are set to receive pay raises, with more dollars targeted directly into classrooms where they belong.
Community colleges receive increased funding for career and technical education.
University students will see a 30% increase in the Hathaway scholarship payout. The Hathaway scholarship has not been adjusted for fifteen years.
What’s being cut? Ineffective and expensive government agencies that funnel your money into private businesses.
Take the Wyoming Business Council. Like many government programs that “fail up,” it has spent nearly a billion dollars since its inception, yet struggles to demonstrate meaningful returns. Despite that record, it continues to receive more funding every budget cycle.
That’s exactly the kind of spending taxpayers are tired of underwriting.
We will continue fighting to cut programs that waste your hard-earned money. And it’s no accident that those crying loudest about “cuts” are often the same ones who benefit most when government grows unchecked.
Slowing the growth of government isn’t gutting it. It’s restraint.
But under Democrat math, unless spending is exploding — unless taxpayer dollars are being sprayed out of the Capitol dome through a firehose — it’s labeled a cut.
The people most alarmed by right-sizing government fail to consider the taxpayer. More often, they’re the ones who profit from government’s expansion and largesse.
My three tax and spend colleagues on JAC, along with their allies in the press, are sounding the alarm.
Conservatives will not be bought off. We remain resolute in defending the taxpayer, and we are determined to put Wyoming on a sustainable fiscal path.
Rep. John Bear represents Wyoming House District 31 in Gillette. He is chairman of the Wyoming House Joint Appropriations Committee
