Earlier today, Texas Attorney General and Republican candidate for governor Greg Abbott announced a comprehensive set of policy reforms designed to limit the growth of government, protect taxpayers and thereby free the state’s economy for all Texans.
The meaty reforms range from strengthening the constitutional spending limit to providing more transparency in state and local debt. These are issues that Republican primary voters in specific, and Texans in general, have long demanded from the GOP-controlled legislature but have thus far not seen enacted.
For example, 94 percent of Republican primary voters said on the May 2012 ballot that they want state government growth strictly limited to no more than the sum of population and inflation. Indeed, that proposal has received similarly high-percentage affirmations on several ballot questions in the last decade.
In his proposal (“Working Texans“) Abbott recommends that we “amend the Texas Constitution and state statute with a stricter spending limitation based on population growth and inflation, and apply the new limit to all GR and GR-Dedicated state spending.”
The full document—which includes substantive proposals regarding debt and spending reform—can be found on his website.
TFR has not yet endorsed in the 2014 gubernatorial contest, but it is good to see Mr. Abbott launching very strong, substantive policy proposals so early in the election season.
