The state of Maine is staring down a $450 million “structural deficit” for the 2026-2027 fiscal year.
“Structural deficit” is the term government employees use when the state’s economists are predicting money allocated by lawmakers or spent by Gov. Janet Mills will be nearly half-a-billion short of the revenue collected in taxes.
It’s kind of like saying that you have a “structural deficit”—as opposed to a problem—when you’ve got $37 in your checking account but you were planning on spending $2,000 on cocaine, DraftKings, and strippers over the weekend.
The massive spending crisis follows the state’s unprecedented spending binge the previous two-year fiscal periods.
Rather than a fun weekend, all Mainers got for the irresponsible spending was crony capitalism, green energy boondoggles, welfare for noncitizens, and city parks laden with used needles.
Now, Mills is telling the blue collar working class to pick up the tab.
In FY 22-23, Maine’s biennial budget was roughly $10.3 billion, while the current FY 24-25 spending plan called for $11.6 billion in spending.
To put those numbers in perspective, Republican Gov. Paul LePage’s last budget was a paltry $7.2 billion, and Mills’ first budget — signed before the COVID-19 outbreak unleashed a bipartisan federal money supply deluge — was just $7.6 billion.
Even when adjusted for unprecedented Biden Era inflation, the proposed spending is exorbitant.
To fund this record-breaking spending spree, lawmakers and the Mills Administration relied on record-breaking tax collections as well as massive tranches of federal spending.
But the federal spending has, predictably, abated along with the sense of crisis surrounding the mild, flu-like pandemic.
However, Mills’ budget proposal suggests the governor would like to continue the massively elevated levels of spending even now that the federal dollars are gone.
But why?
What’s the justification for this? Can anyone identify precisely how Mainers are better off because Mills and Democratic lawmakers spent $6 billion more than Gov. LePage would have over the previous four years? Are the roads or schools any better? Are the streets safer?
Sure, there’s a long, long list of Democrat Party allies who are a whole lot richer. But this left-wing trickle down economics hasn’t improved the lives of the very blue collar Mainers now shouldering unprecedented tax increases thanks to all the “help” they’re supposed to be getting from Augusta.
So why keep the spending levels?
If the dollars to maintain bloated state government can’t be found in Washington, DC, then the justification for the wild spending levels is all the more important. That’s because those dollars will not be located in Mainers’ pockets.
Mills proposed Friday a slate of fee increases and a massive tax increase on the poor in the form of an increased tobacco tax. (If you want any easy test to identify the true progressives versus the fraudulent progressives, keep an eye out for the Ds who go along with this regressive tax scheme.)
This is the largest tax increase proposed on Mainers since two weeks ago when Democrats celebrated the new one percent tax on paychecks — the largest tax increase on Mainers in decades, probably since Gov. Ken Curtis (D) first imposed the state income tax.
But Maine’s financial situation is even more severe than the looming revenue shortfall.
In addition to the $450 million discrepancy between what Mills would like to spend in the next two-year budget versus what Maine will likely raise for revenue, the state is also looking at a shorter-term deficit of $118 million related to welfare.
According to a letter from Dept. of Financial and Administrative Services (DAFS) Commissioner Kirsten Figueroa, the state is $118 million short in funding for MaineCare, a medical welfare program funded mostly by the federal government.
The crisis is so dire, according to the Democratic administration, that Figueroa warned lawmakers failure to cooperate with Mills’ budget proposal may cause the state to stop paying Maine’s health care providers.
MaineCare is by far the largest single program in Maine’s state budget — even though the majority of Medicaid is funded by federal dollars. It’s also one of the fastest-growing spending items in the state, even though Maine’s population has barely budged since 2013.
In that year, Maine spent a total of $2.5 billion on MaineCare, with Maine’s general fund (i.e. Maine taxpayers) paying for $870 million of that welfare spending. By 2022, Maine’s total MaineCare spending had grown to more than $4 billion. Although Mills and lawmakers will insist that inexorable MaineCare growth is fine because the Feds are picking up the tab, that’s not entirely true.
The full cost of MaineCare growth is socialized across anyone who uses health care in Maine. That’s because the reimbursement rates hospitals get for treating the welfare cases is so low, they lose money taking those patients. They have to make that money up elsewhere — those million-dollar hospital executives gotta get paid somehow — so they raise prices for privately insured patients, i.e. the working class.
In other words, everyone paying for their own health insurance sees rates increase as MaineCare grows. Like inflation and solar subsidies, the socialized cost of medical welfare is yet another sneaky tax that progressives use to finance their politics.
To carry the cocaine and strippers metaphor a little further: What Mills is calling a “budget gap” or “structural deficit” is, in fact, a spending hangover — the predictable consequence of delusional “free lunch” policymaking.
For at least four years, Mills and her Democratic allies have been stealing a little too much happiness from the future, and that bill is rapidly coming due.
The only thing that remains to be seen is whether the nominal conservatives at the State House will stage a tough love intervention or cut some deal in the dark of night at the “special” appropriations table to further enable Maine’s obvious decline.
Anyone hoping to live in Maine or raise children here should urge lawmakers to reject the governor’s delusional budget and start from scratch with the principle that Maine must return to pre-pandemic levels of spending.
If you don’t know what’s in your wallet , you don’t go to the grocery store and start loading your cart with piles and piles of over priced “ Comfort Food “ .
Janet Mills and the Augusta Democrats have done , and will continue to do , just EXACTLY THAT .
Spend Spend Spend …..Give Give Give ……Tax Tax Tax
It’s what the damn democrats do best .
More feel good giveaways to many who do not deserve it in the first place .
Illegal aliens who broke our laws to come here so Janet can give them all a drivers license , a place to live , a fist full of food stamps , all paid for with more and more of my tax dollars .
EVERYTHING The Janet Mills administration has done has been rotten for the Maine workers .
Except maybe the thousands of those who work in Augusta in support of her destructive policies .
Democrats always stick together . It’s the ONLY thing they do well , other than spend our tax money .
Until republicans can regain control of the state house this will never end .
In order to survive Maine must elect republicans and NOT democrats .
Wonderful graphic! And very important topic.
the overspening is by design. everything makes sense once you realise politicians are puppets, selected not elected. doing the bidding of a plan decades in the making. our government is forcing societal changes and its working at an incredable rate. youll own nothing and be happy
The oldest trick in the book. Accept federal money to bring in more people. When the federal funds dry up, move the people into a new agency or cabinet department where they acquire cover. How about the Governors Energy Office that expanded from six to eighteen and the Governor funded both the GEO in the Executive Department AND in the Energy Resource Department.
school lunches in maine are rotting the kids teeth out! dont know if its the chocolate milk or what but… send my kid to school with lunch and he eats the schools half the time, always gets chocolate milk tho, cause it free…
TOAD Mills is going by the Biden Doctrine –
Burn everything to the ground, leaving nothing but ashes for your successor.
Until Maine Patriots stand up to Toady Mills, this state is screwed!
And where are Maine Republicans?
Nowhere to be found!
GROW SOME BALLS, REPUBLICANS!
Before it’s too late!
Please don’t forget that the root cause of our financial struggles are the civil servant labor organizers. They create a “problem”. The solution is a program or new office that needs tax payer funded employees that pay dues. The dues are a form of revenue. Five dollars (per person) goes to paying the organizer staff. Five goes to organized crime and the 40 dollar balance is dished out for campaign donations and funding groups like the Maine Peoples Alliance. I find it hard to believe that every Democrat had an anvil fall on their head. Most are actors. Please expose the organizers.
“Mills is telling the blue collar working class to pick up the tab.”
I am telling you governor NO Grow a set of balls and say NO!
Well, Governor Mills, it’s too bad you and your legislators have not learned to be responsible custodians of our beautiful state. Living within one’s means is a basic responsibility principle that citizens learn or they crash and burn. What you have done is to show us all how irresponsible one can be. A bright woman who was elected to govern has shown us that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Go ahead and drive us all to ruin because you never learned how to be responsible. In the end, not as bright a person as you think you are. Grow up Governor and be the adult we elected instead of a child in a candy store.
Great article. The title says it all.
How long before you don’t even get a paycheck and still owe the state more money? .
Glad I had the foresight to leave before it got this bad. Sad to watch knowing I was right all along.
” If you could buy a Gray Hound bus ticket with food stamps we would all, be out of here”
Rotten comes from Rotten.
Take a tour through southern Maine and you will see another leg of the Democratic plan….high density housing. Property taxes are soaring everywhere, Dems do not want you to be able to afford a single family home, they want you packed into an apartment building to live a small life. Gutting personal income via increased taxes helps validate that the “American Dream” is dead, that it is unachievable. Shameful political arrogance.
How much would we have to pay her to leave office?
How can you criticize Janet Mills? It is obvious she is just trying to get all the Republicans onto the welfare roles. She cares! Its simpler record keeping that way. Now that’s accountability.
Mills’ Delusional Budget is a Rotten Deal for Working People
Excellent piece. Thank you.
My last comment didnt make it, was totally normal. What the fuck. Fuck u guys.
Please Mr Robinson
Reprint your article from October 3rd about the democrats bragging about their overspending .
This nonsense can not stand .
Thank You for what you do here !
If you still think the economic destruction occurring nationwide is a left/right issue: congrats! your mind is still hopelessly entrapped in the very purposefully concocted paradigm that prevents you from seeing and addressing the actual root causes of issues at hand.
How it all isn’t as obvious as the noses on our faces to every last person is well beyond my understanding; but let’s see if we can break things down real simple-like:
It’s called the Hegelian Dialectic. Create a problem-> Force a response-> Provide the “solution”. In this case taking the form of “good cop, bad cop”.
The “stupid, crazy” left spends like crazy and destroys everything around them. People go broke and utterly mad and demand changes. The right rides in on their white horse and brings solutions in the form of CBDC’s (digital currency) and draconian, dystopian economic and enforcement “solutions” a-la the social credit system that was hammered out in China.
Bing bang boom.
Wakey wakey there kids: they ALL play for the same team. A team none of us are on. It’s ALL contrived theater, leading people by the nose to their pre-planned and desired outcomes.
I promise you, none of this is by accident or the result of stupidity or irresponsibility. NONE of it.
And NONE of it will ever do anything but continue to worsen, so long as the masses can’t engage their minds and elevate their thinking from “go team red!”.
Maybe a ton of people enjoy being played like a fiddle? I certainly don’t… but I guess that’s why I can’t fathom so many people remaining mental children… (though, if the 80% ‘vaccine’ uptake figure for Maine is anything even close to accurate: that’d certainly explain it too. Hooray for mini brain blood clots!”) I’d say ‘to each his own’, but your childish desires just may be harming others around you…
Structural deficit? Mills will likely just make up 4500 new laws to pay for it. All targeting you.