State budget woes coming into focus

[sonias]

First Reading blog AAS 5/12/10
State budget woes coming into focus

(snip)
Folks, you know things aren’t good when we’re eight months out from the legislative session and four of the state’s five major daily newspapers have budget stories on the front page.

Here are the headlines newspaper subscribers in our big metro areas are waking up to this morning:

Austin American-Statesman: “Speaker rules out taxes to fix budget”

Dallas Morning News: “Prisons, mental care exempt from 5% cuts”

San Antonio Express-News: “Texas now is facing $18 billion shortfall”

Fort Worth Star-Telegram: “Projected state budget deficit rises to $18 billion”

And there is a tease at the bottom of the Houston Chronicle which reads, “Facing a shortfall, speaker wants to avoid a hike, too, while trying to close the gap.”

Delusional republicans lie that they can get through the budget hole without raising taxes. :eyes:

[sonias]

1. Straus vows no new taxes to close budget gap

AAS 5/12/10
Straus vows no new taxes to close budget gap

Speaker Joe Straus on Tuesday gave House budget-writers their marching orders for next year: Cover a hefty state budget shortfall without raising taxes.

Everything other than taxes, however, appears to be under consideration to deal with a 2012-13 budget gap that is now estimated to be as much as $18 billion.

Unpaid worker furloughs, a moratorium on new programs and a four-day workweek were all discussed at the Appropriations Committee hearing Tuesday morning.

"We cannot afford business as usual," Straus said, adding that significant budget cuts will be unavoidable.

So their plan is to starve the baby. Don't be surprised if gambling passes easily this year. After all Joe Straus and family have gambling business interests.

[sonias]

2. Texas facing $18 billion shortfall

San Antonio Express News 5/11/10
Texas facing $18 billion shortfall
(snip)
Pitts' figure includes an expectation that state revenues this budget cycle will fall as much as $3.5 billion short of projections. The state comptroller's chief revenue estimator, John Heleman, said sales tax collections in the fiscal year that started Sept. 1 are about $1 billion behind projections.

Pitts' estimate also includes an expected need for growth in spending to cover such basics as increases in student population.

The expansion of gambling would require a constitutional amendment, Pitts said. That means a two-thirds vote of lawmakers and voter approval on a statewide ballot.

Casino gambling could bring in $1 billion in the next two-year budget period and $4 billion annually in the future, he said.

“I'm going to look at every revenue enhancer that we can get,” Pitts said, adding that Texans now travel to other states to gamble “and we need to grab that money.”

"Revenue enhancer" - ain't it grand?

[sonias]

3. Related Bill White story

AAS 5/11/10
White seeks to tie Perry stimulus refusal to higher business jobless taxes
Democrat says governor's stance shows he's not the tax-cutter he claims.

(snip)
A surge in unemployment claims triggered by the national economic downturn caused the Texas Workforce Commission to double the unemployment taxes it will collect this year. The commission expects to raise $2.2 billion this year, up from $1.1 billion in 2009.

(snip)
"As governor, Bill White will not play politics with payroll tax dollars," said White spokeswoman Katy Bacon. "He'll develop a plan to ensure the unemployment trust fund builds reserves in good times to avoid tax increases during tougher times."

Last year, Perry opposed $550 million in federal stimulus dollars for the state's unemployment trust fund. Accepting that money would have caused the state to extend unemployment benefits at a cost of about $50 million per year. Perry — backed by some key business groups — argued that the state would have been on the hook for those extended benefits once the federal dollars ran out.

Texas Workforce Commission Executive Director Larry Temple told a Senate panel last month that, had the state accepted the stimulus dollars, the short-term tax increase on businesses would have been smaller. Also, "it would have reduced the amount we would have borrowed," Temple said.

Perry - always looking out for himself first! :grr:

[sonias]

8. Even Dewhurst breaks with Perry on unemployment insurance

First Reading blog AAS 5/13/10
(snip)
For as long as he could, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst declined to take a position on whether the state should have accepted federal stimulus dollars for unemployment insurance last year. But Ross Ramsey at the Texas Tribune reports that he broke his neutrality Wednesday. "The lieutenant governor mildly disagreed with Gov. Rick Perry’s decision last year to turn down $550 million in stimulus funds for unemployment insurance. That money came with strings attached, Perry argued, but turning it down increased the size of a tax hike on businesses during a recession. Sen. Kevin Eltife, R-Tyler, has called the decision 'insane'; Dewhurst stopped short of that, said he didn’t have all of the details Perry had in making the decision, but said: "I probably would have taken the money.’"

So White is right to keep taking on Perry's position on that one. Keep punching at him Bill.

[sonias]

9. The Texas Tribune article

Texas Tribune 5/12/10
TribBlog: Dewhurst Predicts No Tax Hikes or Gaming

(snip)
Dewhurst and other state leaders asked agencies to offer up budget cuts of 5 percent, and he wouldn't rule out more. He's not looking at higher taxes to balance a budget that, for now, looks to be $11 billion to $18 billion out of balance. "I do not want to see taxes raised, and I do not thing we're going to need to raise them," he said. And later, he added, "You can't raise taxes during a recession."

He was less opposed to fee increases, while admitting that "to all of us as taxpayers, there's not a lot of difference."

"We want to hold down and keep fees as low as possible," he said. But he didn't say no, promising only to "keep fee increases as close to zero as possible." More cuts are possible, but he tried to drain some of the drama from that. "We're not going to cut into the muscle," he said. "We're not going to cut essential services."

Gambling could bring in some money, particularly in the budget after next, and has some proponents. Dewhurst isn't one of them. "I don't think there's a need to consider that … I am personally opposed to expanding gambling."

Well at least one of them realizes that increasing fees is pretty much raising taxes. An increase in revenue to the state is pretty much a tax on people no matter what Perry and his revisionist crew call it.

[sonias]

4. In Too Deep

Texas Tribune audio story on budget 5/12/10
In Too Deep
(snip)
Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports the newest projections show the shortfall could be as much as $18 billion.

It's a short listen - under 3 minutes. One thing I learned is that the $8 billion dollar rainy day fund can only be tapped if 2/3rd of the Texas lawmakers agree to it.

[sonias]

5. Perry’s Fiscal Flim-Flam (slideshow)

Texas Observer 5/6/10
Perry’s Fiscal Flim-Flam
How the governor has spun disastrous economic policies into winning politics.
(snip)
On March 12, 2009, Gov. Rick Perry smiled for the TV cameras at an upscale luxury hardware store in one of Houston’s tonier districts. He was there, reporters in tow, to reject $555 million in federal stimulus money for Texas’ unemployed. “The strings attached to these federal funds could very well strangle an economy that leads the nation in exports and Fortune 500 company headquarters, and I might add is doing far better than the vast majority of other states,” Perry told the cameras.

What he didn’t mention was that 47,100 Texans lost their jobs that same month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics– the biggest loss in the nation after California and Florida. Texas wasn’t escaping the blows of the worst recession since the Great Depression; instead, working families were being buffeted by job losses, stagnant wages and rising premiums for health care and insurance.

Four months after Perry touted Texas’ economic health and turned down the unemployment funds, the Texas Workforce Commission would be forced to borrow $2.1 billion from the feds and nearly double taxes on employers to replenish the state’s empty unemployment fund. “Because of a political calculation, he needed to not accept something so he could bash it,” says Rep. Jim Dunnam, a Democrat from Waco, of the $555 million. “At this point, Texas has borrowed $2.1 billion for the UI fund, and businesses will have to make up for it by increasing their taxes.”

Lots more at link above. Perry's World vs The Real World.

:kick:

[white cloud]

6. Just another "Act of God"

Just Wait till the GOM spill hits our economy.

[sonias]

7. Oh it's coming too

Don't think our tourism and fishing industries are safe. Nothing in that Gulf Coast is safe for decades.