During his eight years in office, Governor Dennis Daugaard reduced the share of federal support for South Dakota’s state budget from 44.84% in Fiscal Year 2011, the last Mike Rounds budget, to 33.20% in FY2019, the last Daugaard budget.
Governor Kristi Noem’s proposed FY2023 federal spending spree, made possible by the wise pandemic-fighting, recession-busting governance of President Joe Biden and the Democratic Congress, doesn’t depend as much on federal dollars as Rounds or as the emergency stimulus-infused FY 2021 budget. But Noem does have South Dakota leaning on the federal crutch five-plus percentage points more than Daugaard left us:
| federal | total | %fed | |
| FY2018 actual | $1,391,286,724 | $4,222,824,341 | 32.95% |
| FY2019 actual | $1,431,971,864 | $4,313,615,753 | 33.20% |
| FY2020 actual | $1,827,341,928 | $4,691,683,716 | 38.95% |
| FY2021 actual | $3,527,437,393 | $6,320,205,537 | 55.81% |
| FY2022 budgeted | $1,828,991,020 | $5,114,203,473 | 35.76% |
| FY2023 Noem | $2,216,510,328 | $5,706,407,141 | 38.84% |
Every Noem budget so far has spent or proposed greater reliance on the federal government than the budgets of the juche-obsessed Danish austerian who preceded her. Noem’s proposed FY2023 budget would spend 54.5% ($2.01 billion) more than Daugaard did in FY2013 and 32.3% ($1.39 billion) more than Grandpa Cheap‘s final FY2019 budget. That’s an average increase in total state spending under Noem of 7.25% each year. From FY2011 to FY2019, Daugaard’s state budgets increased at an average of 1.79% per year.
Will the grandkids call Noem “Grandma Cha-Ching”?
38% of your budget comes from blue state liberals (excepting Texas: the only red state that pays more than it receives)?
How about a thank you to American liberals, for our concern and assistance, from the SD majority?
No. Ain’t gonna happen. Like grudznick, SD Republicans are happy to eat other people’s breakfast and then leave their toilet overflowing.
It’s OK Cory, we don’t mind paying for South Dakota. It’s more or less like an allowance. My kids always thanked me however.
Well…the Governor’s job, as she sees it, is to propose to the legislature the priorities and programs to spend all this loose federal cash lying on her dining room table. Legislators still have to work out the actual priorities and programs and the amounts for each. The session is a time of negotiation and compromise and it will be interesting (and entertaining) to see how the Governor and her cadre of out of state consultants manage to negotiate with Legislators who owe them nothing.