Much to the chagrin of the liberal pundits and bloggers in Austin, Gov. Rick Perry isn’t going away quietly. If his effort to promote the Texas Budget Compact and string of recent endorsements are any indication, Perry is gearing to be the leader in the fight for...
Texas Budget
DMN: Anti-Compact, Pro-Tax
Reading over the editorial endorsements of the last several days, the Dallas Morning News has a very focused criteria for their candidates: opposition to the Texas Budget Compact, and a disturbing “flexibility” on raising taxes. In endorsing moderate lackey Todd Smith...
Straus Won’t Cap Spending
Over the last 20 years, state government spending has increased 300 percent – nearly twice as fast as the sum of inflation and population. Frankly, we can’t afford that level of spending any longer. And yet Speaker of the House Joe Straus isn’t willing to put the...
Texas Budget Compact
The historic trend for the cost of state government has presented Texas taxpayers with a bill we increasingly cannot afford. For some time, we have consoled ourselves with the idea Texas is a small-government, low-tax state. And we are, when compared to the other...
Round Rock Revenue-Enhancers
Another Texas city has added revenue-enhancement, er, red-light, cameras to their budget stream, counting on residents to break the law and pay for the devices. This comes just after voters in Houston forced their city council to turn their cameras off. According to...
Start Now On A Conservative Budget
Raising taxes and seeking new revenue sources is off the table for Texas taxpayers and voters, so it also needs to be for lawmakers. Government efficiency, not creative financing, is what taxpayers have been, and will continue to be, demanding. Texans for Fiscal...
Budget gimmicks hide behind lack of transparency
In the coming months, state agencies will begin submitting their spending requests to the Legislative Budget Board as part of their Legislative Appropriations Requests for the 2014-2015 biennium budget. These requests will include the use of general revenue dedicated...
Gambling Against Texas
Much has been made by the Texas House speaker and others about the alleged need for “new revenues” in state government. So some big-spenders just happen to have a ready-made solution, a magic money-making elixir: expanded gambling. And some conservatives are foolishly...
Perry’s Still Leading Texas
With Rick Perry bowing out of the presidential race this week, his detractors and the liberal pundits have predictably started writing his political obituary. That's mostly wishful thinking on their part. After all, Rick Perry has the opportunity to use the last-half...
Fix The Gimmicks
While the legislature balanced the Lone Star State’s ledger-book last year, they did so in part by taking a well-worn, if unsavory, path to get there. A top priority for the next legislature must be to correct the creative accounting and get rid of the gimmicks so...