As the Maryland General Assembly convened its 447th legislative session Wednesday, everyone offered different views on the best way to close a nearly $3 billion budget deficit.
Officially, Gov. Wes Moore gets the first word on the matter. He says the proposed fiscal 2026 budget he will release next week eliminates about $2 billion of the deficit, in part by increasing government efficiency one line item at a time.
“That means basic things like IT consolidation. That means things like, how are we thinking about fleet management?” he told reporters Wednesday afternoon. “There's a lot of things that — frankly, it's just waste — that if we can just be smarter about the way we do our government, that we're going to be able to find cost containment and cost controls in that.”
Moore said his budget also focuses on efforts that he believes will boost economic growth.
“Making sure we're the world's best public education system in the state of Maryland is a core priority for me,” he said. “Making sure that it's getting the resources that it needs is a core priority for me.”
Republican legislative leaders have their own ideas. During their press conference Wednesday morning, they suggested cutting Medicaid spending, which legislative analysts have said is one the major drivers of the deficit, by lowering the income limits that determine who qualifies. Currently a family of two adults and two children could make just over $100,00 a year and qualify. A family of two adults with one child could make about $80,000 a year and qualify.
“I understand $80 to $100,000 in the high-cost state of Maryland, particularly in the Baltimore-Washington corridor, is not rich; it's not even upper middle class,” House Minority Leader Jason Buckel told reporters. “But the purposes of Medicaid was to provide a safety net for those who needed it.”
Senate President Bill Ferguson, a Democrat, said members of his party won’t support kicking people off health insurance, but might support shifting some people from Medicaid to the state’s health insurance exchange if it saves the state some money.
Moore and Republicans both suggested looking for savings in the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, the education reform plan that the legislature passed a few years ago and that the state has begun implementing.
“There's certain aspects of it that are worth revisiting and worth looking at, and that's simply just because — it's not because we don't believe in the work,” Moore said. “The Maryland Constitution has been adjusted 200 times since it was ratified. Social Security has been adapted 17 times since it was ratified. Any big project, any ambitious project, it's important that you go back and revisit and pressure test and adjust to what the current conditions are giving it.”
Republican leaders offered more specific ideas, such as rolling back plans to implement universal pre-kindergarten for 3 year olds.
Ferguson said the state does need to make some changes to its planned pre-kindergarten expansion for logistical reasons, such as a lack of physical space in public school buildings to accommodate the new students. However, he said, changes to education spending won’t solve this year’s budget crisis because the Blueprint plan is already funded through fiscal 2027.
Above all, Republicans say they will oppose any new tax increases.
Likewise, Moore said he has a “very high bar” for any new taxes.
Ferguson said he is more open to the possibility of a new tax that affects the wealthiest Marylanders, such as an increase in the state’s capital gains tax.
“The Senate Democratic Caucus overall does not want to raise taxes if we don't have to,” he told reporters Wednesday. “That said, we are going to protect our values, and we are in a very difficult budget moment.”
