By Rep. Ken Paxton
for 2010 - 2011 Spending Cycle
Last week Texas Comptroller
Susan Combs certified the states two-year $182 billion budget that we passed during the 81st legislative session. An appropriations bill may only become law if the Comptroller certifies that there is sufficient revenue available to pay for it. When the legislative session began Texas was only one of seven states not facing a budget deficit which is a result of our fiscal responsibility the past few years.
Even with the current downturn in the economy we still managed to pass a reasonable budget that accomplishes most of our goals without raising taxes without putting the State into a deficit and without spending our reserve savings knows as the Rainy Day Fund. This budget increases our spending by a modest 7.2 which includes the $12.1 billion federal stimulus dollars which are mostly dedicated to education and health care that we received.
These stimulus funds which are managed by the Texas Comptroller are kept in a special account and will remain transparent to ensure that this money will be used for its intended purposes.
In order to ensure responsibility in future state budgets I included a budget rider to direct the
Legislative Budget Board to determine if our current State spending limit is appropriate. I believe that our States spending should be restricted by a well-defined limit of population growth plus inflation.
If a spending limit that is indexed to population growth plus inflation had been enacted in 1990 Texas would have a budget that is $35 billion less than it is today. This savings could have funded significant property tax relief transportation infrastructure improvements and other important state needs.
While other states are raising taxes we managed to lower the margins tax (our States business tax) and adopt a budget that stays within the rate of population growth plus inflation.
As a result of our fiscal responsibility this session the State should have approximately $9 billion set aside next session to use for any emergency situation or to allocate towards tax relief initiatives.
