What They'd Do About the Budget Shortfall
Everyone has an opinion about the budget shortfall these days: how big it is, what cuts we should make to confront it, whether new taxes — or new revenue of any kind — can be employed as a stop-gap. In an effort to consider competing viewpoints on these and other subjects, we asked three big thinkers in the Capitol community to tell us what they'd do if they had the power to take on the shortfall themselves.
Talmadge Heflin, a former chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, directs the Center for Fiscal Policy at the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation. His ...
Comments (9)
M G
The Hammond plan is by far the best. Castro's plan is basically California repackaged. Heflin's plan is basically "cut everything I don't like plus some."
Gotta love how he's all, "let the private sector handle things like history and the arts." LOL, the private sector would have us all watching American Idol and superbowl commericals, and would pave over historical structures with strip malls or a new CVS. Guess he hasn't heard about how Daughters of the Republic of Texas haven't been handling the Alamo so well and may be hiding serious structural problems. The pittances spent on historic preservation or the arts are nothing compared to medicaid, etc... I see no reason items like that should receive deeper cuts than anything else.
John-Henry Liberty via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Legalize and tax Cannabis.
Robbie Cooper
Wow. The progressive candidate is in favor of even more spending coupled with raising taxes, but no mention of reducing or cutting back.
Shocker, I'm telling you. Shocker.
It's almost like it's not really their money that they're playing with. Almost...
Joel Stanford via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Here's a solution. Ban the purchase of furniture in state offices for 5 years. It seems that every other month people here at my agency which shall not be named are getting entirely new furniture set ups. New ash wood desks, new chairs, new ergonomic this and that... All at enormous costs, and all entirely unnecessary. I myself have taken the ethical road and so kept a horrible desk set up and chair designed for an enormous cow of a human, simply because it works. Time to shave a few million off the budget by this means.
Teddy Wilson via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Both those proposals would only close a fraction of a percentage of the budget shortfall.
Mike Openshaw via Texas Tribune on Facebook
Joel, that what you'd expect from 'big thinkers'. Maybe it's time to consult some 'small (as in, 'small government') thinkers'.
Joe Blanda via Texas Tribune on Facebook
It doesn't bode well when the "big thinkers" can't even agree on the extent of the budget shortfall. DeLuna Castro says $27M; Hammond says $15M; and Heflin doesn't bother to give a figure as he trots out typical villains ("Obamacare," "administrative bloat in K-12 education") instead of taking responsibility for legislation that he probably had a big part in crafting and enacting: the property tax cut that was supposed to be balanced by changes to the franchise tax.
Karen Cummings
Here is another contributing factor:
Property tax cap for seniors puts some North Texas cities in a bind
http://www.allbusiness.com/government/government-bodies-offices-regional-local/13737029-1.html
Karen Cummings
By darn, Texans don't pay taxes but.......
Homeowners Insurance goes up because of inadequate fire protection
Auto Insurance goes up because of inadequate police protection
Health Insurance goes up because Texans who do not have health insurance goes to the ER.