What Can We Do Without?

As you may already know, Missouri is running a large budget deficit, despite several rounds of budget cuts recently made by Gov. Jay Nixon. According to the Post-Dispatch, Missouri may have to cut an additional $500 million from its budget.

Some Show-Me Institute staff members are considering a set of suggestions for additional cuts that the state could make without hurting its core programs. Hopefully, we can find line items within the state budget that can be cut without negatively impacting other areas of state spending. But this is a time-sensitive issue, and researchers combing through the state budget might not see an area of spending that others know through experience to be ineffective.

So, if you happen to know offhand of certain programs that could easily be cut, let us know. The comment section is open. Or, if you’d like to take a closer look at state spending, you can use our Show-Me: The Books tool, which lets you create graphs, tables, and charts of state spending, with data that’s updated every week. You can see the most current version of the state budget here.