Iowa's DOGE commission wants to muck around with our public retirement system and do merit pay for teachers lol such innovators.

Hell yeah, do it! Find me at 537741615167

Few more

We'll get it up in HTML shortly; sorry for the PDF.

Anyway, @commongoodiowa.bsky.social put out a backgrounder on all of this yesterday: www.commongoodiowa.org/moduledocume...

Lawmakers should take a beat, walk away from plans for more tax cuts and start building consensus on how we will raise the revenue we will need to meet Iowans’ needs: great public schools, affordable health care and child care, and clean water to drink.

The good news is, fixing a structural budget deficit may take political will, but it isn’t a mystery.

And Iowa faces fiscal challenges not only from state tax cuts, but from other sources, too, including growing costs for private-school vouchers, a new slew of tax cuts and Medicaid and SNAP responsibilities courtesy of this summer’s federal reconciliation bill and a slowing economy.

The fact is, tax cuts simply never pay for themselves

If all were proceeding according to plan, one would think they would be meeting their projections, not falling short again and again. But at nine different points in REC forecasts across three fiscal years, officials have cut revenue projections from the preceding forecast.

The REC projects a 9% drop in revenue for FY 2026 from FY 2025, which ended in June. They also issued their first full projection for FY 2027, a modest increase from this fiscal year. Although that would be a welcome turn, it’s a prediction that should be taken with great caution.

Can’t argue. But when Republican leaders, including Governor Reynolds, all say that all is well, there’s nothing to see here? That’s where hot takes diverge.