The typical KY school district increased teacher pay by only 2% this year, with 40 districts providing no raise at all. Inadequate state funding kept districts from gaining ground on eroding teacher salaries, which are 20% below inflation-adjusted 2008 levels 1/2

New $300 million budget shortfall, caused in large part by state income tax cuts, causing thousands of seniors to go on waiting list for meals www.lpm.org/news/2025-09...

Today the state's forecasting body reduced the official revenue estimate for this year by $305 million in the face of a weakening economy and another reduction in the state individual income tax rate to 3.5% to take effect Jan. 2026. 1/

👏 Shoutout to @KyVoices4Health & @kypolicy for pushing back and making sure people know what’s at stake: our health care, our hospitals, and our communities. ✍️ Emily Beauregard @KyVoices4Health & Dustin Pugel @kypolicy.bsky.social Read more ➡️ www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-e...

Very thorough(bred?) report on how Kentucky is now a big casino state, which are taxed very small.

Kentucky is now a "casino state" with gambling on slot machines surpassing $10 billion this year, more betting per capita than neighboring Ohio. But tax revenue from slots in KY falls far below comparable states even as the problems with gambling addiction grow dramatically. 1/2

As Kentucky kids head back to school, the funding gap between wealthy and poor school districts grew again last year to $4,247 per student. Adjusted for inflation, that's a 13.6% bigger gap than it was in 1990 when the state passed KERA to address insufficient school funding. 1/2

BlueOval SK Union Drive Echoes Workers’ Historic Safety Fight at Ford youtu.be/vK5JCibudmM?... via @YouTube

Kentucky Minimum Wage Now Half its Previous Peak, and Below Poverty Line kypolicy.org/kentucky-min...

Spencer County, Mayfield Independent and Monroe County are the Kentucky school districts where the programs the Trump administration is now withholding funds for--totaling $87 million across the state--made up the largest share of their 2024 federal funds. Here are the top 20:

If you hated the big ugly bill that passed Congress, you should also hate the Kentucky legislature’s efforts to reduce or even eliminate the state’s individual income tax. They're the same idea. Here's why: 1/

The federal budget and tax law that passed last week will worsen health and deepen hardship in Kentucky and provide more giveaways to the already wealthy. Harms include: 1/

This is your exit. #medicaid #medicaidcuts

State tax revenues grew by an anemic 0.8% this year, significantly lower than inflation of 2.4%. That's largely due to the cost of state income tax reductions and the impacts of a slowing economy. 1/

Muhlenberg County hospital: "we believe these proposed cuts could force some hospitals in Kentucky to close and reduce programs and services, harming access to care for all patients, not just those covered by Medicaid."

Given recent economic uncertainty private-sector gains were notably weaker in June, up just 74k. The unemployment rate ticked down to 4.1% with another drop in the labor force. The only real boost was in state+local educ—maybe a seasonal quirk. More losses in manufacturing and federal jobs. #EconSky

Kentucky stands to lose more in benefits, Medicaid coverage and rural health care access than nearly any other state, should a GOP-backed bill that passed Tuesday in the U.S. Senate get final passage from the House. www.kentucky.com/news/politics-government/article309797040.html#storylink=cpy

Kentucky hospitals, health advocates urge House GOP to reject Medicaid cuts in U.S. Senate bill. “The human toll that these sweeping reductions will have on one of the poorest and most health challenged states is unfathomable." @sarahelizabethladd.bsky.social kentuckylantern.com/2025/07/01/k...

Alaska cannot survive this bill, say the Republican and Independent leaders of that state’s legislature: www.nytimes.com/2025/06/27/o...

It only takes a little math to dissect what the One Big Beautiful Bill is all about - Securing tax cuts for wealthy people on the backs of people who will have their health coverage and food assistance taken away.

Eastern Kentucky miners fought and died to create a health care system in a region where the market never would have on its own. Now members of Congress threaten to take it away.

Commentary by Jason Bailey @kypolicy.bsky.social Will the coalfields ‘get over’ losing hospitals miners fought to create? Which side will Congress be on? kentuckylantern.com/2025/06/27/w...

The cuts to Medicaid in Congress threaten five of the original Miners' Memorial Hospitals set up by the UMWA, plus nine others in eastern Kentucky 1/2

Rural Kentucky would be the bull's eye of harm from the Medicaid cuts in Congress. Just devastating

With Senate vote looming, studies show 200,000 Kentuckians could lose Medicaid coverage courier-journal.com/story/news/l...

Eastern Kentucky families who were already struggling under inflationary pressure and repeated natural disasters are now contemplating a new threat — a bill estimated to cut hundreds of billions in SNAP benefits over the next decade and drop millions from enrollment. www.lpm.org/news/2025-06...

Kentucky schools struggle to keep up as state funding lags far behind inflation spectrumnews1.com/ky/lexington...

This suggests that Republicans may add yet another deeply harmful health care cut to the Senate bill – a cut that would take health coverage away from even more people, shift massive, unaffordable costs to states, & could even lead some states to end their #Medicaid expansion.

Misunderstood sleeper issue in OBBB cld mean the end of #SNAP as a national food assistance program available in all states. The cost-shift drafting means a state that can’t pay its share of benefits loses ALL fed $; a state that can only pay ½ has to cut enrollment by about ½.

Losing billions in Medicaid funding could force 35 rural KY hospitals to close www.kentucky.com/news/health-...

Read more: kypolicy.org/35-kentucky-...

NEW: Proposed cuts to Medicaid risk 35 rural hospital closures in Kentucky, more than any other state. Is your local hospital on the list?

Eroding state funding for public education has resulted in Kentucky teacher salaries failing to keep up with inflation. It's the same story with pensions, where new full-career retired teachers make $8,564 or 14% less in 2024 than they did in 2016. 1/2

Congress is looking to pass the buck on its cuts to state budgets and say "you figure it out." For example, the House plan shifts costs for SNAP food assistance that equal the current expense of employing 3,135 Kentucky public school teachers. 1/2

Trump’s budget bill could cut federal food assistance to 575,000 Kentuckians www.kentucky.com/news/politic...

Commentary by @jbaileyky.bsky.social Trump's elimination of Job Corps wouldn't promote work. The savings would be miniscule. So what are these cuts really about? kentuckylantern.com/2025/06/06/j...

Op-Ed: Job Corps centers help our most vulnerable. They’re being closed to help the wealthy www.kentucky.com/opinion/op-ed/article307951355.html#storylink=cpy

The Trump administration is shutting down Job Corps, including centers in Morganfield, Prestonsburg and Greenville. Job Corps costs 0.02% of the federal budget, while the tax cuts skewed to the wealthy moving through Congress cost 400 times as much. More here: www.courier-journal.com/story/opinio...

NEW REPORT: House Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill, now in the Senate, would shift major new costs to the state- & local-level, paving the way for harmful cuts to food assistance, health care, & other services like education. Here’s the 3 top things to know:🧵

‘Where do these kids go?’ Feds close KY job training sites for at-risk youth www.kentucky.com/news/state/k...

DOGE & the federal govt are requiring seniors & the disabled get to Social Security offices to handle issues previously fixed by phone. But in Kentucky 25% of seniors live at least 1 hour 8 minutes from the nearest office. In EKY it’s 1 hour 21 minutes: www.cbpp.org/research/soc...

A long long time ago, in a far away galaxy... the US used to tax the rich

The House bill "will decimate rural hospitals, empty food banks, and leave our children hungry and our families poorer. . . .[its] detrimental effects on everyone but the very rich should send voters of every stripe to their phones and emails to protest." www.kentucky.com/opinion/edit...

Medicaid in Kentucky gets absolutely hammered in the House bill--loss of $1.7 billion, 2nd-worst proportionally of all states, and lost coverage of 207,000-345,000 Kentuckians, 5th-worst among states

Our statement on the U.S. House passage of budget and tax legislation. 2/2

Our statement on the U.S. House passage of budget and tax legislation. 1/2

New numbers from ITEP on tax cuts in House tax bill: It’s a $79,000 tax cut for the top 1%. This is just not what America needs.

Those plans to cut Medicaid and SNAP you've heard about? They're being paired with plans to extend and expand tax breaks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans. Here's what that means for Kentuckians:

A National Weather Service office in Kentucky was scrambling to cover the overnight forecast on Friday as severe storms moved through much of the eastern U.S. The office is one of several left without an overnight forecaster as a result of cuts ordered by the Department of Government Efficiency.

The cut to Medicaid being proposed right now is larger than all previous cuts in the program's history... combined. If enacted, it would cost Kentucky lives and livelihoods. kypolicy.org/medicaid-cut...