Texas Insider Report: AUSTIN Texas This sessions budget writers must recognize that just as Texans family budgets have shrunk so now must the states. Now is the wrong time to increase the burden of state government on those family budgets" said the Honorable Talmadge Heflin Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy & former Chairman of the Texas House Appropriations Committee.
Now that the Comptroller has released her estimate of state revenues for the next two years it is imperative that the Texas Legislature produce a budget that balances within existing revenue.
Legislators must set careful priorities to ensure that taxpayers limited resources are spent in the most effective and responsible manner.
While this challenge may seem daunting I encourage incoming lawmakers to heed the lessons of 2003when the Legislature closed a $10 billion budget
shortfall without raising taxes and positioned Texas for a decade of economic dominance.
The decisions of this legislature will determine what kind of future Texas will have. A budget within existing revenues will keep a light burden on Texas taxpayers encouraging large businesses and entrepreneurs to create jobs here. However raising taxes to expand governments footprint would send Texas down the path of California and Ohio toward economic stagnation and fiscal bankruptcy."
Talmadge Heflin is Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Heflin served 11 terms in the Texas House of Representatives and chaired the House Appropriations Committee in 2003 leading the Texas Legislatures successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase.
