Gov. Haley Barbour will announce a further round of budget cuts by Monday, he said today to business leaders at the Mississippi Economic Council's "Capitol Day." Barbour said that the state's revenue will fall at least 8.3 percent below estimates. In November, Barbour cut $42 million from state agencies while sparing Medicaid and the Mississippi Adequate Education Program. This time, he said, Medicaid and MAEP will suffer cuts as well.
"I could cut everything but MAEP and Medicaid and achieve $140 million worth of savings," Barbour said. "At that point I cannot make any more cuts except to MAEP and Medicaid."
State law prohibits the governor from cutting any agency's funding by more than 5 percent unless all other agencies also take a 5 percent cut. Barbour said that he would not cut MAEP or Medicaid funding beyond 5 percent. He will need to cut between $175 million and $310 million to balance the budget for the 2009 fiscal year.
Despite the state's bleak economic forecast, Barbour said that he wanted to protect funding for work-force development and job training.
"We're going to have some serious issues about how to keep our economy as strong and as healthy as it can be during the downturn, so that we stay poised to be the first out of the gate when the economy turns up," Barbour said.
Acknowledging that the House of Representatives passed a bill Wednesday restoring $17 million to higher education that he had cut in November, Barbour warned that fiscal irresponsibility could hurt the state for years to come.
"There's some people over there who think it's good politics to vote for anything that comes along," Barbour said.
"Our higher education system in my opinion is underfunded," he added. "But we can't spend what we ain't got."
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