Castro: Start by Casting Aside Wishful Thinking
Budget hearings have been under way for only a few days, but it’s already clear that $72 billion in general revenue won’t be nearly enough to meet the needs of Texas. Instead of cutting down to the revenue estimate, the 82nd Legislature must take a balanced approach that uses our reserves and adds revenue. And we have to start by casting aside wishful thinking; we are writing the 2012-13 budget, with higher costs and increased enrollment in education and health care services — not some past budget. (In fact, the 2006-07 budget is the most recent one that could ...
Comments (1)
Rhonda Hutchison
Excellent points! I especially like the idea of eliminating tax breaks that have served their purpose and weren't intended to be permanent. That's not raising taxes - that's resetting them to "default" - where they're suppose to be.
I would also add that tapping the Rainy Day funds is necessary to ensure a "softer landing" for social programs (to borrow a phrase from the Fed.) I am deeply concerned about the fate of schools in my district, which has a high % of poverty households. So many local budgets are handcuffed by State rules. Some of those rules need to be change, and some of the State's planned "program upgrades" need to be postponed.
But when it comes to education, change of this magnitude on the State level is like trying to stop a boulder that's rolling downhill. TEA and Legislators need to dialogue with districts and get some policy compromises in place that will make the austerity budgets easier to manage and still educate our kids. Could they do it in a year? It's a longshot, but not doing it will doom the neediest districts to being squashed by that rolling boulder in September.
The Rainy Day Fund doesn't need to plug budget holes, but it DOES need to fund these hard transitions.