Grading Texas

Gov. Perry’s public, but reluctant agreement to use as much as $3.2 billion of the Rainy Day Fund to help the Legislature close one budget hole is hardly cause for celebration. That will help lawmakers get rid of a deficit for the current fiscal year but still leave a revenue shortfall as big as $23 billion for the 201213 budget period, and Perry still is vowing not to approve Rainy Day spending for that emergency.

In other words, the governor is treating the state’s biggest financial crisis of his lifetime as if it were a mere drizzle, when, in truth, it is a monsoon.

The $3.2 billion – depending on how much is earmarked for schools will help alleviate some of the $9 billionplus in proposed cuts to the public education budget. It will save some teacher jobs, and it will lessen cuts to health care. But the Rainy Day Fund is projected to have a record $9.4 billion for lawmakers to spend for public needs.

The governor still wants to leave $6.2 billion on the table, $6.2 billion that could save many more educators’ jobs, help preserve reasonable class sizes for many school kids and keep some nursing homes from having to shut down. Despite what Perry’s closedminded, antigovernment boosters are telling him, I believe most Texans would rather see the money put to good, public uses rather than left in the bank to give the governor bragging rights with a narrow slice of rightwing voters.

The Rainy Day Fund has a record balance thanks, in large part, to high oil prices, which Texans are paying daily at the gasoline pump. It’s their money, not the governor’s.

Instead of helping the House Appropriations Committee clear a budget hurdle yesterday, Gov. Perry was campaigning with his rightwing base again. I think he knows the governor’s race is over, but dreams of a vice presidential nod apparently persist in the Perry camp.

In a teleconference with Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (a fancy name for a group that wants to shrink government, let the poor fend for themselves and see how many kids can be crammed into one classroom), Perry came up with still another excuse – Japan for not spending any of the Rainy Day Fund to avoid deep cuts in the public schools and health care.

Yes, the earthquake and tsunami on the other side of the Pacific have entered into the debate over the Texas budget. Texas isn’t considered at high risk for earthquakes, but we do have hurricanes, floods and tornadoes.

Referring to the tragedy in Japan, Perry said the Rainy Day Fund was Texas’ “insurance policy” against a major natural disaster.

The Rainy Day Fund could protect Texans from all kinds of disasters, but right now the biggest potential disaster facing our state is a $27 billion revenue shortfall that, if not bridged, could have crippling effects on the state’s future prosperity. The Legislature needs to deal with that emergency now. It would be irresponsible to keep $9.4 billion (the Rainy Day balance) in the bank while thousands of taxpaying teachers lose their jobs, thousands of taxpaying parents watch educational quality take a hit and the state’s already thin safety net splits open.

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/firstreading/entries/2011/03/15/_happy_birthday_to_rep_13.html

There are property tax cuts, and there are disasters. The 2006 school finance law, championed by Gov. Rick Perry, was both. And since it has caused about onethird of the state’s current $27 billion budget hole, it was discussed again during a meeting of the Senate Finance Committee today.

The committee was reminded that the state revenue package, namely the expanded business tax, adopted in 2006 was designed to be about $4 billion a biennium short of paying for the property tax cuts. That was the way the Republican leadership, during a reelection year for the governor, wanted to achieve a net tax reduction. An improving economy, they predicted, would make up for the difference.

As we all know by now, of course, they weren’t any better at forecasting the economy than they were at providing responsible leadership. The economy tanked, the business tax underperformed (and in a big way) and the structural deficit, as it is called, in the school finance system is now about $10 billion for this biennium.

“I didn’t vote for it (the 2006 law) because I knew it would not work,” said Sen. Kevin Eltife, a Republican from Tyler who has become something of a Republican conscience on budgetary issues.

“It would be nice if we could admit our mistake and fix it,” he added.

Several weeks ago, Eltife said it would be “insane” not to spend any of the Rainy Day Fund and also advocated finding additional revenue to avoid crippling cuts in public education and other important state services.

Eltife undoubtedly is annoying the governor and many of his Republican legislative colleagues. But I bet many of his East Texas constituents, at least those who haven’t drowned themselves in tea, are applauding.

Several polls have indicated recently that many Texans believe the Legislature can and should cut spending to dig itself out of a $27 billion budget hole. But strong majorities don’t want to cut education or health care.

As Frances Deviney, Texas’ KIDS COUNT director for the Center for Public Policy Priorities, pointed out at a breakfast presentation today: “Nobody wants to cut anything. They just like the concept of cuts.”

People obviously believe that there are huge pork barrels filled with wasted spending scattered throughout the state budget.

You can always find waste somewhere, depending on your definition of waste. I, for one, believe the Texas Enterprise Fund, which allows the governor to provide corporate welfare to businesses that don’t need it, is a form of wasteful spending.

But except for the most conservative, antigovernment types, most legislative budgetwriters know there isn’t enough real waste in state government to come anywhere close to closing the huge revenue shortfall they now confront. They know that without spending the Rainy Day Fund and finding new revenue, harmful cuts to education and health care will have to be made.

So, why do many Texans not believe them?

For years, political candidates and officeholders have been barraging Texans and other American voters with pronouncements against “excessive red tape” and campaign promises to “cut government waste.” In so doing, they have reinforced a public misperception that there is such a thing as a “free lunch,” that government can provide topnotch public schools and provide a safety net for the poor and infirm without anyone having to dig too deeply into their pockets to pay for them.

Gov. Rick Perry has been a champion of the “free lunch” myth. But he has been governor for more than 10 years, and since 2003 his fellow Republicans have been in charge of the Legislature.

So, if there were still a lot of wasted spending in Texas government, whose fault would that be?

No, the tons of waste aren’t there, just a bunch of political mythspreaders.