January 28, 2010 8:15AM # Less Is More in Education Funding By [Adam B. Schaeffer](https://www.cato.org/people/adam-b-schaeffer) --- SHARE Spend more money on education, the President says? Actually, we should be looking there for savings … [here](http://article.nationalreview.com/423006/a-responsible-choice/adam-b-schaeffer) are some of the numbers: > [State governments](#) spent 35 percent of their general funds on K–12 education in 2007, according to the National Association of State Budget Officers. In contrast, Medicaid — which is continually singled out as a problematic state-budget item, even though most Medicaid funds come from the federal government — accounted for just 17 percent of general-fund expenditures. Combined, state and local governments spend 27 cents of every dollar they collect on public K–12 education system, but only 8 cents on Medicaid. ##### Related Tags [Education](https://www.cato.org/education), [Tax and Budget Policy](https://www.cato.org/tax-budget-policy), [Center for Educational Freedom](https://www.cato.org/center-educational-freedom) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).