Fact Checking Political Mail in Senate District 21

With many legitimate reasons to be outraged in modern southern life (WHAT DO YOU MEAN THEY MAKE THEIR GRAVY WITH SKIM MILK?!!) we really do not need our candidates for public office to create fake reasons to pop a beta blocker.

Enter Brian Will, a candidate for State Senate District 21, who I thought made a few dubious claims during the AFP forum I moderated a few weeks back. A few of those comments even drew applause, and Will was certainly not shy about criticizing some of the biggest conservative reform packages the Senate has passed in recent years, including the Red Tape Rollback and the Georgia Promise Scholarship. But since that forum wasn’t recorded, I decided not to invest too much time into fact-checking the eyebrow-raisers.

Turns out, I should have trusted my instincts.

A Peach Pundit reader sent me a campaign mail piece from Will that looks like it was designed to manufacture outrage using a claim that is demonstrably false.

“Revenues in Georgia have increased by $11 billion dollars a year over the last four years. Spending has increased by over $13 billion dollars a year in that same time frame.” Emphasis mine.

Simply put, nuh-huh. Not even close.

Whenever I dig into a claim like this, I try to find the kernel of truth or at least the confusion that might explain how someone got their wires crossed. And here, the $11 billion figure seems suspiciously close to the current balance of Georgia’s Revenue Shortfall Reserve, also known as the rainy day fund, which sits around $10.7 billion. But that is not an annual revenue increase. That is a cumulative reserve balance built up over several years of budget surpluses.

The rainy day fund is a critical safeguard for Georgia’s long-term economic stability. It is how we weather downturns and disasters without turning to tax hikes or massive spending cuts. This is conservative governance 101: save when times are good so we can manage when they are not. Georgia did exactly that, and it is a big reason we bounced back faster than many other states after the Great Recession and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking of that recession, our state nearly drained the rainy day fund just to keep the lights on. Even then, it was not enough. Cherokee County Schools had to shorten the academic calendar by eight days. That is what a real fiscal crisis looks like and under conservative leadership Georgia weathered that storm.

Now let’s deal with the second part of the claim: that spending has increased by $13 billion a year for each of the last four years. For that to be true, the budget would need to have grown by $52 billion over that span. But here’s the reality:

That is a $9 billion increase total. Not $52 billion. Brian Will’s numbers are not just a little off. They’re inflated by hundreds of percent. His mailer exaggerates both revenue and spending growth by more than triple and in the case of spending, nearly five times the actual rate.

The massive jumps Will implies simply are not there.

Brian Will ends his mail piece by asking:

“Where is all that money going?”

Since he asked, let’s answer as best we can since his numbers appear to be made up.

When evaluating changes in government spending, it is critical to account for both inflation and population growth. Failing to do so leads to misleading conclusions because raw dollar increases do not tell the whole story. As the cost of goods and services rises over time, and as more people move to Georgia, the state must spend more just to maintain the same level of service per resident. A one billion dollar increase today does not go as far as it did ten years ago, and it has to be stretched across a larger population. That is why economists and budget analysts rely on inflation-adjusted per capita spending to measure the true size and growth of government. When you use that more honest metric, Georgia’s spending has remained remarkably stable, and that undercuts the entire premise of Will’s alarmist claim.

Here is what the real picture looks like:

This chart tells the story clearly. The green line shows Georgia’s inflation-adjusted per capita spending over time. In real terms, state spending per person has increased modestly, and only recently started to move above pre-pandemic levels. Even then, the growth is incremental and responsible, not explosive or reckless.

That is a credit to conservative leadership.

I do not mind a candidate who challenges the status quo. But when you just make things up to stir up outrage and pretend Georgia’s been mismanaged by reckless spenders, I am going to call foul.

Under Republican control, Georgia has built one of the nation’s strongest rainy day funds, cut income taxes multiple times, suspended the gasoline tax multiple times, sent rebates to taxpayers, and consistently maintained one of the highest fiscal rankings in the country. The budget reflects long-term planning, not short-term panic. The facts just do not support the narrative Brian Will is trying to push.

If you are going to run for office on the premise that Georgia is broken, you better bring receipts. So far, all he has brought is bad math.