Lobbyists and lawmakers are fighting to preserve the terms of the contracts signed by parents who enrolled in the Texas Tomorrow Fund prepaid college tuition plan.
Economy
Get the latest on jobs, business, growth, and policy shaping the state’s economy with in-depth reporting from The Texas Tribune.
Posted in
Economy
A Taxing Session?
Lawmakers will find themselves in a multibillion-dollar ditch when they return to Austin in January 2011. Constitutionally, they can’t write a deficit budget, so they’re expected to use not just cuts but revenue raisers to keep the books in balance. Ben Philpott, who covers politics and public policy for KUT News and the Tribune, filed this report.
Posted in
Economy
TribBlog: Holding Steady
Texas unemployment held steady at 8.2 percent last month, according to the Texas Workforce Commission. That’s the same seasonally adjusted rate as in January, December, and November, but it’s up from 6.8 percent in February of 2009.
Posted in
Economy
Ranking the Recession
Both Texas and the U.S. at large have begun climbing out of the latest economic recession. Now economists have begun looking back on the 2008-2009 downturn to see how it compared to other recent down economies. KUT reports on a new study from the Federal Reserve Bank in Dallas that puts the most recent recession at the top of the list. Ben Philpott is reporting for KUT News and the Texas Tribune.
Posted in
Economy
Ranking the Recession
A new study from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas compares the 2008-09 recession to other downturns — and puts it at the top of the list. Ben Philpott filed this report for KUT News and the Tribune.
Posted in
Demographics
Let the Counting Begin
Census Bureau questionnaires arrive at 8.4 million Texas homes this week. “Fill that sucker out,” the bureau’s regional director says, “so we don’t have to come and knock on your door.”
Posted in
Economy
Read My Lapse
“You have to do a few things when you run for office in Texas,” says one of Rick Perry’s allies. “You have to debate. You have to release your tax returns. And you have to say you won’t raise taxes.” Bill White will surely debate the governor before November’s general election, but at the moment he hasn’t done the other two. The former probably won’t sink him, but the latter could — by declining to drink the no-new-taxes potion, he’s handing his opponent a weapon to use against him. Unless, of course, he’s successful at changing the way the argument goes.
Posted in
Economy
The Polling Center: Is Texas a Good Economic Model?
What do Texans think about the fiscal and economic model for the rest of the country? Do they agree with Gov. Rick Perry that the Texas way is the better way?
Posted in
Economy
Bamboozled by the Establishment
The big-government crowd in Washington and elsewhere are bankrupting our country. And Republicans are just as culpable as Democrats in treating our taxpayer dollars as “other people’s money” to be spent as they and the special interests decide.
Posted in
Economy
2010: White Starts the Argument [Updated]
Democrat Bill White said he won’t rely on “Soviet-style budgeting” and “hot air politics” if he’s elected governor, and said the state should make education its first priority and would be better off with a governor who’s got business experience when it comes to economic development.