Federal Fiscal Irresponsibility Smacks Hoosiers in the Face

Per statute, Indiana legislators have until April 29 to pass a state budget for the next two years. Prior to President Trump's inauguration for his second term in office, Indiana was projecting a budget surplus for the 2025 fiscal year. However, the most recent revenue projections have swung drastically downward, and lawmakers are now facing an estimated shortfall of $2 billion. 

Chaotic US Trade Policy Has a Direct Impact on Indiana’s Budget

While rising costs in healthcare, education, and public services are likely a factor in creating the shortfall, the more fundamental reason for this sudden crisis is a starkly weaker economy driven by chaotic trade policy at the federal level. When businesses at home and abroad are helpless against the caprices and resentments of the most unstable and power-hungry president of our lifetime, the ability to plan (let alone strategize) flies out the window. What we're all left with is a tanking investment market, rising interest rates, and all of us staring down the barrel of a big, beautiful, Trump-branded recession.

There are two ways to fill a revenue shortfall: Raise revenue to support the services we Hoosiers have come to expect, or reduce expenses by forcing us to live with even less public investment than we have now. One guess which way our legislature will go. Indeed, Governor Mike Braun signed a public school austerity tax plan into law on April 15, just a day before the revenue projection was released. While we have no insider intel to prove it, it sure smells like Braun rushed to sign the bill ahead of the projection's release so he could feign innocence at hitting P–12 education with a double whammy of fund reductions.

Hoosier Quality of Life Is at Stake

So, who is paying for the shortfall? Public education, public health, and infrastructure upkeep are surely on the chopping block, and the impact of all of those cuts will cause much more pain among those already at the bottom of the economic ladder than for those at the top. Indiana claims to want to be a "state that works" (that is, the business-friendliest state in the nation), but without the state protecting our quality of life, businesses here will be increasingly hard-pressed to find and retain strong employees.

Again: Republicans Are Irresponsible, and We Will All Suffer for It

None of what I'm saying is novel or likely even unfamiliar to you, dear reader. However, I can't help but tie this whole series of events back to my central criticism of the modern Republican party—they have walked away from the very notion of responsibility as a core value. For example:

• A responsible party would have shut Donald Trump down as a viable candidate way back in 2014.

• A responsible party would have corralled Trump's worst impulses once elected and made clear that cruel, corrupt, or stupid behavior would not be tolerated.

• A responsible party would have blasted Trump's pre-2020 election conspiracy-mongering, lies, and threats about how he could only lose if Democrats cheated.

• A responsible party would have cut all ties with Trump, forever, after the January 6 insurrection.

• A responsible party would have voted to impeach Trump in 2021 and prevent him from ever reassuming office.

• A responsible party would not have permitted a vast number of other federal, state, and local leaders (such as many in Indiana) to follow in Trump's footsteps, ignore economic and social reality, and take our public life out at the knees through public attacks and funding deprivation.

To be responsible means to shoulder a burden. Sadly, the Indiana GOP's refusal to be responsible means that everyday Hoosiers are going to bear the responsibility of surviving under a coming austerity regime.