As he walked out of the Joint Appropriations Committee on Thursday evening, Senate Minority Floor Leader Mike Gierau, D-Jackson, said he was ashamed.

Over the course of four days, he watched Republican lawmakers propose deep cuts to the state’s budget for the next two years. Among other things, they suggested stalling state employees’ salaries at 2022 levels and cutting more than 10% of the University of Wyoming’s block grant funding.

Although he attempted to push back, Gierau is one of two Democrats on a committee stacked with members of the hard-line conservative Wyoming Freedom Caucus.

“I have had moments in my time in the Wyoming Legislature of great joy, of great happiness, great sorrow, great disappointment — all of those emotions,” he said on Monday. “I’ve never felt ashamed before, until this last week.”

The Appropriations Committee’s week of meetings marked the first time lawmakers tweaked the state budget after Gov. Mark Gordon presented his $11.1 billion proposal to the committee on Dec. 1. The governor’s proposal is often a starting place for lawmakers to work from as they develop a draft budget bill to bring to the entire Legislature in February. This year’s budget session starts Feb. 9.

Of the $11.1 billion initially recommended, only about $3.3 billion of that was to come out of Wyoming’s general fund, the main vehicle of state spending. The remainder was a mix of federal funds and other state funds like special revenue or expendable trust funds. In total, Gordon’s proposed $11.1 billion budget was $1 billion more than his last recommended budget, proposed to committee at the end of 2023, before the 2024 budget session.

“I would like to remind us all of one key fact that might be helpful as we think about the budget and spending,” Gordon told the committee in December. “Seventy-six percent of Wyoming’s entire budget isn’t spent on the administration of state agencies at all. It goes out the door to Wyoming communities, schools, hospitals and local providers.”

Lawmakers spent the following weeks hearing from state agencies, local government officials and community organizations across the state about their needs. Then, they proposed cuts for the Governor’s Office, Wyoming Department of Health, Wyoming Business Council, local government distributions and more. In doing so, legislators said it’s time to wean the state and its communities off tax dollars, no matter if they are federal or state.

“It was Reagan who famously said, ‘Government’s not the solution to the problem. It is the problem,’” Rep. Ken Pendergraft, R-Sheridan, a member of the Freedom Caucus, said at a Jan. 13 meeting. “And many of us do not feel that that’s just a catchy phrase. We actually believe it.”

Pendergraft said as much before proposing a long list of cuts to the Department of Health’s budget, including $58 million in federal funds for the Indian Health Service, which provides health insurance through Medicaid on the Wind River Reservation. 

At the same time, Pendergraft proposed an $8.5 million increase to match federal funding for reimbursements at “critical access” hospitals that maintain labor-and-delivery units. This spending was meant to curb maternity deserts statewide.

“We have become addicted to government intervention and a lot of people have become dependent upon the government,” Pendergraft said. “Like any addiction, that withdrawal is going to have some pain.”

The Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which makes up a majority of the 62-person House of Representatives and its leadership, shares Pendergraft’s perspective.

In a press release on Jan. 12, the Freedom Caucus said its top priority for the upcoming budget session was to “cut wasteful spending and limit growth of government” and to return to pre-pandemic spending levels.

The Freedom Caucus also wants to make pen and paper ballots the default voting method for all 23 Wyoming counties; codify a private right of action to “empower parents when their rights are violated;” remove alleged pornographic materials from the children’s sections of all public libraries in Wyoming; and ensure public access to judicial opinions, orders and oral arguments.

Gierau argued that recent increases in spending aren’t unwarranted. Instead, he described them as mitigation for inflation. He said everything from a pound of beef at the grocery store to medical services at a hospital costs more than it did four years ago.

While the JAC approved nearly every proposed cut or rejection of an agency budget increase, a lone Republican became visibly frustrated over the course of the week. 

Sen. Ogden Driskill, R-Devils Tower, former president of the Senate, said it was “painful to go through withdrawal.”

“It’s also painful to kill your state one piece at a time,” he said.

But the committee didn’t only take a knife to the budget.

In some cases, Republican committee members proposed increased spending, including raises for state troopers and highway maintenance employees, additional employees for some county district courts and increases to Hathaway Scholarship student payouts.

A fuller picture of the proposed state spending over the next two years will become available soon, after a draft of the budget bill is published.

Lawmakers only took voice votes based on the governor’s and state agency proposals over the course of the week. The changes have to be put together by legislative and state staff.

Reactions to the initial decisions and committee discussions were swift, however.

“Reasonable people can debate how best to deliver economic development or rural OB care; that is governing,” Gordon said in an op-ed Tuesday. “What is happening is different. A faction has decided wearing red coats and declaring a ‘fiscal cliff’ creates a useful story line. Cutting close to a billion out of a budget that already has a $500M surplus is not credible. In the end, this is about ‘Who do you trust?’”

Rep. John Bear, R-Gillette, the chair of the JAC, also wrote his own op-ed in response to criticism over the course of the week.

“Slowing the growth of government isn’t gutting it,” he wrote. “It’s restraint. But under Democrat math, unless spending is exploding — unless taxpayer dollars are being sprayed out of the Capitol dome through a firehose — it’s labeled a cut. The people most alarmed by right-sizing government fail to consider the taxpayer.”