80th Legislature: The Failures Of The Republican Budget

House Bill 1, the General Appropriations Act (better known as “the budget”), will be up for debate in the House today.

The mammoth 929-page bill includes appropriations for every state agency under the sun and more for the next biennium. Of course, the average person has no idea what’s in the budget item-by-item. For those so inclined, there are a couple of summaries you can look at: one from the House Research Organization (65 pages) and one from the Legislative Budget Board (171 pages).

And, if you don’t want that much detail, here’s what the recapitulation looks like for the major budget appropriations from general revenue:

As always, the budget is one of the biggest debates of the entire legislative session. This session is no different. And, this year’s budget is just as bad if not worse than budgets from the last two sessions when Republicans controlled the Legislature.

House Democrats, of course, are wise to all of this and yesterday held a press conference where they criticized the budget and outlined their priorities, which address many of the human needs the Republican budget ignores and slights.

First off, the current budget, which will be debated on the House floor today, does nothing for children’s health insurance, tuition deregulation, school teachers and even cuts funding for the Texas Youth Commission.
Expect dozens of amendments, but not a full floor substitute, from House Dems determined to improve upon this awful bill.
The bill, authored by Warren Chisum (R-Pampa) as chair of the Appropriations Committee, would actually drop even more children from Children’s Medicaid and CHIP benefits.

Instead of addressing these human needs, Republicans have found a way to spend record amounts of money on things like property tax cuts and still leave an estimated $8.5 billion dollars on the table which could be used to address important budgetary needs.

Of course, one excuse for not earmarking the funds, which technically are left over and “surplus” only as a result of the drastic cuts of the 78th Legislature in 2003, is because a court ruling is anticipated concerning a federal Medicaid lawsuit which could cost the state billions. Chiusm is one of the people who has been advocating setting aside this money. But, he’s alternately been saying it won’t cost the state this much and that we have nothing to worry about. (Flip. Flop. Flip. Flop.)

The bottom line with this budget is that, since Republicans gained control of the legislature, spending has increased by a whopping $49 billion (42 percent) with little to show for it in terms of expanded state services or better educational programs. By the time you add House Bill 15, which is the supplemental appropriations act for the current biennium, we’d be spending $165 billion dollars and not exactly getting much in return.
State Rep. Pete Gallego (D-Alpine) offered some interesting notes on what House Bill 1 doesn’t do during yesterday’s press conference:

This should cause every sane Texan to wonder exactly what the Hell we are getting for our money. Again, I refer you to Gallego’s remarks:

As Gallego said, “Budgets are about priorities.”

And, with this kind of spending, where are the Republicans’ priorities?

I can tell you where they aren’t: they aren’t with sick kids, they aren’t with public schools, they aren’t with teachers, they aren’t with university students paying skyrocketing tuition rates, they aren’t with utility customers getting screwed at every turn.

I can’t wait to see some of the amendments. This one is going to be a bloodbath.

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