Where will Texas find money to fill budget gap?

[sonias]

AAS 3/4/10
Where will Texas find money to fill budget gap?

Somewhere, somehow, Texas will have to find some new money.

It is too soon to say how much extra will be needed to help close the projected shortfall in the state's 2012-13 budget. Estimates of the budget hole range from a very conservative figure of $11 billion to more than $15 billion.

Budget cuts are already in the offing. State leaders are expected to pull the trigger soon on about $1 billion in spending trims, which could include prison guard layoffs and reduced payments to doctors and other Medicaid providers.

But budget watchers say it is unlikely that legislators will be able to cut their way out of the hole when they return to Austin in January.

"History would suggest that budget cuts won't be the sole solution," said Dale Craymer, president of the business-backed Texas Taxpayers and Research Association. While urging caution, Craymer said legislators "have to look at what they can do to raise revenues."

(snip)
Many lawmakers, including Gov. Rick Perry, have signed an Americans for Tax Reform pledge that binds them to oppose "any and all tax increases."

You see how Perry continues to lie to Texans. He can sign that pledge with his blood he still won't be able to stick to it. Not that he cares about lying anyway.

[sonias]

1. Fee for All!

Texas Tribune 4/9/10
Fee for All!

(snip)
The 2003 session most closely mirrors the current scenario — a national recession, a previous budget balanced with the use of one-time funds — and remains fresh in political minds. Then, the Legislature turned to deep budget cuts. Talmadge Heflin, the House appropriations chair in 2003 and the current director of the Texas Public Policy Foundation's Center for Fiscal Policy, says that when projected revenues and expenditures are out of sync, "The task is not to get revenue up. It is to get expenditures down." Social services like education, public safety, and health and human services took the brunt of the blow. Money from the Rainy Day Fund and relief from the feds (both chipped in more than $1 billion) helped. But that’s not all.

"They certainly didn’t do it on budget cuts alone," says Dick Lavine, a senior fiscal analyst at the nonpartisan Center for Public Policy Priorities, which released a review of the 2003 budgeting process this week. Balancing the budget, he says, also required "new revenue, creating the appearance of new revenue, and cost-shifting."

The "appearance" of new revenue comes from so-called smoke-and-mirrors provisions that, for example, shifted an $800 million payment to the Foundation School Program into the next biennium and deferred payments to the Employees Retirement System and Teacher Retirement System.

Cost-shifting refers to transferring the burden of paying for a service from the state government to its beneficiaries. The best-known example from 2003 was the deregulation of tuition at public universities. Those with state-subsidized health insurance also had to shoulder higher costs — including $790 million in new co-pays, premiums and other costs.

Or put another way "a tax by any other name is still a tax". And you watch Perry and the Rs starting to Enron the whole budget process right now before the election. Smoke and mirrors are in high demand.

:kick:

[bamacrat]

2. Legalize it. Don't criticize it. Could help with border violence and money issues. n/t

[sonias]

3. I agree with you 100%

But this being the "tough on crime South", it won't happen. Remember they were willing to let the whole "gay" population die when they though AIDS only targeted the homosexual population.

The Rs would starve children before they decriminalized marijuana. Hell we can't even get medical marijuana to get a hearing in committee. We barely passed a needle exchange pilot program for Bexar in 2007. And that was with an republican Senator sponsoring the legislation in the Senate and it got tacked onto a bill Perry couldn't veto. But then that fucker A.G. Abbott had it declared illegal.

For Christ's sakes it stops disease from spreading! Those nimwits kept arguing how it enables drug users!

Texas Criminal Defense Lawyer 5/15/2008
Texas Drug Paraphernalia Laws Prevent Needle Exchange

In a clear blow against logic, rational public policy, disease prevention and costs to the public, a needle exchange program in Bexar county (San Antonio) was declared to violate Texas’ drug paraphernalia laws.

Texas legislators who support the program hope to fix the law to allow these programs. Studies have show that needle exchanges clearly help reduce disease transmission in at risk populations of addicted drug users.

We're as stupid as we look in the Lege. :grr:

[bamacrat]

4. They don't care as long as their pockets are lined by the prison lobby etc.

The MPP needs to go big, start shelling out insurance lobby money, we would see a 180 real fast.

[sonias]

5. What are the odds? (legalized gambling )

Texas Tribune 4/12/10
What are the odds?

Start with a budget shortfall and a Legislature that doesn't want to raise taxes or make dramatic cuts, then dangle budget-balancing money from "volunteers" — better known as gamblers. With that strategy, promoters think they've got their best opportunity in years to legalize slot machines and rescue failing race tracks and a sickly horse industry while adding $1 billion a year to state revenues.

"The Legislature usually only acts in a crisis situation, and that's what I would call what we're going to be in," says Rep. Edmund Kuempel, R-Seguin. Kuempel has sponsored gaming bills in past sessions and heads the House committee that oversees gambling issues. The pitch has been similar each time lawmakers have liberalized gambling laws: a promise of billions in new revenue, sans taxes, from "voluntary" payers (no one is forced to gamble) — and a tried-and-true political dodge, dusted off last week by Kuempel. "They're just voting to let the people of the state of Texas decide," he says, pointing out that legislators wouldn't actually be voting to legalize new wagering. "The tougher the budget situation is, the easier it is to let the public vote for it."

Any change to the state's gaming laws would require a change to the Texas Constitution, and two-thirds of the Legislature must vote to put an amendment on the ballot. Recent polling indicates voters are receptive to the idea (only 10 percent in a recent University of Texas/Texas Tribune Poll said they want to outlaw gambling in the state, and most favored casinos in some form). Gambling opponents, meanwhile, argue that the industry’s rosy previous forecasts for boosting state revenue have since proved overstated — leaving few to benefit but the gambling operators themselves.

Pot o’ gold

Two years ago, Texas budgeteers staring at a sizable difference between projected revenues and projected costs lucked out — Congress, like a leprechaun with a pot o' gold, bestowed upon the states billions in federal stimulus funds. Legislators here used most of the $17 billion windfall to balance the current budget and a sizable chunk to balance the previous budget, which was running into the red.

The leprechauns from D.C. aren't going to save the Texas Lege this time. I'm betting some kind of gambling bill makes it to the voters.

[white cloud]

6. Money from Gaming odds are yes

Tax cuts for Big Business and corp,

And less money for:
where cost-conscious voters cheer promises of shrinking government, than when they're in office voting to cut specific programs — roads, education, health, prisons, welfare, etc. — with powerful constituencies.

Sad day for our kids future.

[sonias]

7. I see you're a betting person

Who can we get to take our bet? :shrug:

Payout will be very small.