At a press conference Wednesday, Deputy Senate Minority Leader Cindy Rosenwald (D-Nashua) blamed the looming budget deficit on “reckless Republican spending.”
“Republicans have continued to cut state revenues while spending money like drunken sailors, leaving property taxpayers stuck paying the bill,” said Rosenwald, who serves on the Finance and the Ways and Means committees.
Rosenwald’s comments touch on the central debate over the upcoming budget. Democrats have adamantly argued that Republican tax cuts have starved revenues, creating the possibility of a deficit this biennium and putting the state behind the fiscal eight ball for the next two years.
Republicans respond the problem is not a lack of revenue but a surge in spending. Many agree with Rosenwald’s critique, though they would argue that overspending has been a bipartisan effort.
Setting aside the question of whether tax cuts have hurt state revenues (perhaps for a future FCF), is it true that New Hampshire Republicans have been “spending like drunken sailors”?
Let’s look at the facts.
Yes, State Spending Is Up.
In 2017, Gov. Chris Sununu signed his first two-year budget. It was $11.7 billion.
In 2023, he signed his final budget, spending $15.2 billion. That $3.5 billion is a 30 percent increase in spending. The single largest leap came in the last budget, when spending soared $1.7 billion in a single budget cycle — a nearly 13 percent jump.
And the surge in spending is even larger when only the state’s portion is evaluated. The total budget includes millions in federal funding for numerous programs, such as Medicaid. The General and Education Trust Fund portion of the budget includes only spending financed by state revenues, such as business and other state taxes and lottery revenue.
According to the Josiah Bartlett Center for Public Policy, “the FY 24–25 budget represents a substantial increase in budgeted state appropriations. It spends about $566 million more in the General Fund and nearly $299 million more in the Education Trust Fund than the previous budget did.
In total, the budget allocates nearly $3.8 billion in the General Fund and close to $2.46 billion in the Education Trust Fund.”
That puts the one-year increase closer to 16 percent.
But Inflation Has Been Up, Too.
However, the past four years have been a period of unusually high inflation. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation rose around 27 percent over that same period. And two of these budgets were significantly impacted by COVID-19.
Meanwhile, the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) reports that, on an inflation-adjusted basis, general fund spending by all U.S. states grew by an average of 8 percent in fiscal 2022 and 7 percent in fiscal 2023—the highest rates of growth in more than 40 years.
NASBO’s analysis of single-year spending (as opposed to the biennium) found New Hampshire spending rose from $7.8 billion in 2022 to $8.3 billion in fiscal year 2023, a 6.3 percent jump.
New Hampshire spent a total of $8.3 billion in fiscal year 2023 spread out across general funds, different state funds, bonds, and federal dollars.
For FY 2022, New Hampshire spent a total of $7.8 billion. According to NASBO, that marked a spending increase of about $500 million over FY 2023 — or a 6.3 percent jump.
How does that compare to other states? Massachusetts, with a Democratic governor and Democratic supermajorities in both legislative chambers, experienced a 9.4 percent spending increase from FY 2022 to FY 2023.
(The national median using NASBO numbers was 7 percent.)
So, Have New Hampshire Republicans Been Spending A Lot?
In the past biennium, definitely. Even accounting for inflation, adding nearly $2 billion in a single biennium is big money — and it can’t be blamed on Joe Biden’s inflation.
It could be argued that calling it “Republican spending” isn’t fair, because the GOP didn’t have a reliable majority in the evenly-divided House. And Republicans are quick to point out that Democrats like Rosenwald were pushing for more spending, not less, over the past eight years.
But Have They Been Spending “Like Drunken Sailors?”
Absolutely not, says Navy veteran Rep. Rich Lascelles (R-Litchfield). “Having been a submariner who had to ‘drink my dolphins’ while stationed in the U.K., I can assure Sen. Rosenwald that sailors would not spend like the government has. We didn’t have pockets full of other people’s money.”
Fellow Navy veteran Rep. JD Bernardy (R-South Hampton) concurred.
“As drunken sailors, we spent our own money – and had to show it before we got our next drink. As Republican legislators, we squeeze every nickel of the public’s money until the buffalo farts.”
Lascelles added, however, that he agrees with Rosenwald’s fundamental critique that state spending has been excessive.
We give the claim that Republicans have been “spending like drunken sailors” a grade of…
It’s hard to argue that spending hasn’t risen sharply, and on the New Hampshire GOP’s watch. But so has inflation, and it would be less than accurate to leave it out of the analysis. Plus, points must be taken off in defense of the fine men and women of the U.S. Navy — drunk or sober.
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