How Much Help From the Government Can Future Generations Afford

 We are in a period of “full employment”, 3.8 percent unemployment and 9.6 million unfilled job openings at the end of September, why do we need ever increasing amounts of “help” from the government? Why is it that politicians' answer to everything is “Let’s spend more borrowed money.”.

I asked my state senator (Mike Bernskoetter) and my state representative (Rudy Veit) to tell me how much Missouri spends on Medicaid, neither bothered to respond so I tried to dig the numbers out of Missouri budgets. I apologize in advance if I misinterpreted the information.

The earliest data I found was for FY2016. In 2016 Missouri’s Department of Social Services spent $8,392,884,352, of that $7,199,185,240 was spent by the MO HealthNet Division, of that $ 7,098,195,810 was allocated as a Medicaid expenditure ($1,357,868,968 of the Medicaid expenditures was funded from the General Fund). Total Missouri expenditures for the year were $24,627,837,921.

FY2022 was the last year for which I could find actual expenditure data: Department of Social Services $10,939,370,330, MO HealthNet $9,710,993,917, Medicaid $9,579,267,603 ($1,701,758,159 funded from General Revenues).

 FY2023 appropriations were: Department of Social Services $14,295,734,122, MO HealthNet $12,660,016,082 , Medicaid spending $12,335,952,032 ($1,788,622,349 funded from General Revenues).

For FY2024 Governor Parson’s recommended the following: Department of Social Services $16,425,702,626, MO HealthNet $14,744,543,701, Medicaid $14,439,901,539 ($2,028,127,798 funded from General Revenues). His total recommended spending for 2024 is $50,532,767,022, over double the spending in 2016. ($48,030,735,721 was appropriated for total FY2023 spending.) How many of you have seen your income double since 2016? If 2024 Missouri Medicaid spending was divided over all Missouri’s 2.4 million households each would have to pay over $6,000 to fund Medicaid.

From 2016 to 2023 federal spending increased from $3.85 trillion to an estimated $6.13 trillion. 

Interest payments on the national debt were $17.4 billion in 1973, just two generations ago; they were $240 billion in 2016 and they are projected to be $660 billion in 2023. Every household in the US needs to pay $5,000 per year in 2023 taxes just to cover the cost of the interest on the debt. President Biden’s 2024 budget projects that annual interest payments on the national debt will cost taxpayers $960 billion by 2028.

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