If you go to an Asian resturant and order a cheeseburger, you expect it to be…well, kind of off. After all, it’s not their specialty.

Revenue estimates from Carole Keeton Strayhorn are quite similar: you should have no expectation whatsoever that they’ll be worth a damn.

Surely we all remember 1999, when Raggedy Ann (then known as “Rylander”) boosted her revenue estimates by $800 million to help Governor George W. Bush look good in his race for president.

Now, Raggedy Ann says that the state will be $4.3 billion in the black at the end of the current budget cycle. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram gave this some nice play, but my thoughts are, uh, “so?”

The only revenue estimate that counts is the one issued when the Lege goes into session. God knows what that will be. (If Susan Combs is the comptroller, she’ll probably say it’s $43 trimabalizan dollars and one dirty, smut-filled novel.) The point is, though that Strayhorn’s politically motivated calculations shouldn’t cause anyone to get their panties in a wad at this point.

Of course, everyone under the sun has already come up with ways to spend this surplus that may or many not exist and may or may not be as big as she says it is.

While it should be spent on things like education and social services, I’m sure the Republicans will want to spend it on far, right-wing, radical priorities. And, just for fun, I’ve listed several (fictious?) possibilities:

•printing out millions of copies of color pictures of fetuses, which will then be statutorily mandated to be hung in family planning clinics.
•funding school voucher ‘pilot programs’ in Highland Park, Alamo Heights, and River Oaks.
•creating the Bob Perry Endowed Chair In Construction Science at Texas A&M University.
•purchasing Prentice Hall (or another textbook publisher) so that the State Board of Education can truly go hog wild with anti-evolution, pro-Christian educational materials.
•Buy tons of stock in James Leininger’s companies.

The list could truly go on and on. Please share YOUR IDEAS on what the Republicans might want to do with the surplus in the comments.