State senators have unveiled a list of almost $5 billion in cash-flow tricks, property sales and fees that could be used to ease cuts in the state budget, but it's not enough to completely close the gap between what they have available and what they hope to spend.

It doesn’t include a “sick tax.” But the Senate version of the state’s 2012-13 budget still takes direct aim at hospitals, in an effort to find hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings and narrow the state’s revenue gap.

Republican lawmakers have vowed to close the budget hole without a new tax. But that hasn’t stopped Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, from proposing a penny per ounce tax on soft drinks.

The 2006 tax swap — lowering local school property taxes and creating a new business tax to make up the difference — is at the center of Texas' current budget troubles. The architects are still pointing fingers over what and whom to blame for the state's “structural deficit.”

Hamilton on Victoria's efforts to divorce the University of Houston, Ramshaw on a disagreement between right-to-life groups over laws governing when life ends, E. Smith's TribLive interview with Sen. Kel Seliger and Rep. Burt Solomons on redistricting, Aguilar's interview with the mayor of Juárez, Tan on the continuing hunt for money to buy down budget cuts, Grissom on a psychologist who found more than a dozen inmates mentally competent to face the death penalty, Stiles and yours truly on the House redistricting maps and Galbraith on cutting or killing a tax break for high-cost natural gas producers: The best of our best content from April 11 to 15, 2011.

The Texas Legislature is faced with a budget challenge that pits the Republican majority’s desire to cut government spending against a vulnerable target: the frail and the elderly covered by Medicaid and housed in nursing homes. 

The Big Men on Campus in the school known as the Texas Legislature have the unenviable job of finding money that might alleviate the massive cuts outlined in House Bill 1, the general appropriations bill for the next biennium.

The House Ways & Means Committee is considering several bills that have the same mission: to make permanent the franchise tax exemption for businesses that report $1 million or less in gross revenue. 

Data don’t lie: Amendments dominated the House floor last Friday as Representatives debated the budget bill. A visualization of the House transcript reveals “amendment” was the most used word.

No time to follow every twist and turn of the Texas Legislature? We've made it easier for you with our weekly recaps of the action under the dome.

The betting game has already begun on whether the budget battle between a more moderate Senate and a far stingier House will lead to a standoff — and a special session in the summer. The two budget committee chairmen refuse to say whether one body may have more sway than the other in the final outcome. 

Texas senators scratching for new state revenue canceled a meeting to talk about their options today, but a copy of their list got loose — and it includes $5.5 billion in taxes, fees, asset sales and accounting tricks that could be used to ease their budget problems.

A Texas lawmaker said the magic words Thursday morning to a panel of exhausted and nearly hopeless state budget writers: he has found a “new revenue source without raising taxes.” 

Texans on all sides of the budget equation rallied at the Capitol Wednesday for vastly different priorities. 

Less than two days after approving a state budget that cuts $23 billion from current spending, Rep. Jim Pitts says House leaders are already talking among themselves about how much more money they'd be willing to spend. 

The Texas House started with a $164.5 billion budget and ended with the same total. But lawmakers spent the better part of a weekend making changes inside the budget for 2012-13 before giving it their approval, 98 to 49.

It’s not just that state Sen. Robert Duncan doesn’t like gambling. He doesn’t think he could get legalized casinos approved. But Duncan's got a mission: Find $5 billion to $6 billion.

We cannot solve this budget crisis with blind, across-the-board cuts. There are better choices. If we return to the pragmatic political approach that once defined our politics, we will keep alive the tradition of each generation sacrificing for a better Texas.