Now, don't let me get in the way of daily 2 Minutes of Hate on my dear old Texas here on the DailyKos, but I would like to point out our current fiscal fiasco started well before the current progressive bogeyman, "The Tea Party". See, this is actually the last gasp of neoconservatives here in Texas though I am sure they want the yahoos of the Tea Party to take the fall.
Now, the Tea Party came about around 2009 after corporate interests bought the Campaign for Liberty off of Ron Paul. Our budget issue started in 2006, when Rick Perry pushed through a tax code that had no hope of paying for itself to stroke the pet issue of Texas Republicans; property taxes.
Gov. Rick Perry says he has a track record of not raising taxes
http://politifact.com/...
Lawmakers returned to the school finance topic in a 2006 special session, engineering a tax overhaul that reduced local school property taxes. To help districts offset the loss of revenue, the Legislature revamped the franchise tax, increased the cigarette tax and modified how the state taxes used-car purchases. Perry signed the overhaul legislation into law in May 2006.
A key goal of the new franchise tax, often called the margins tax, was to apply it to companies that had largely avoided the old corporate franchise tax. As expected at the time, businesses paid more in total after the overhaul of the franchise tax than before, although less than was forecast. Franchise tax revenue had totaled $5.8 billion in 2006 and 2007. In 2008 and 2009, the first two years of the revised tax, total revenue was $8.7 billion.
People have been saying for the last few years this was coming down the tracks, heck, the day it was passed even.
Strayhorn predicts tax-plan shortfall
Comptroller calls Perry's proposal 'a hot check to pay for schools'
By JANET ELLIOTT Copyright 2006 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau
http://www.chron.com/...
AUSTIN - Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn on Friday criticized her political rival, Gov. Rick Perry, for wanting to use surplus revenue to help fund property tax cuts, saying it would cause a multibillion-dollar "gaping hole" in future state finances.
"The Perry tax plan asks the Legislature to write a hot check to pay for schools," said Strayhorn, an independent candidate running against Perry.
John Sharp, a Democratic former comptroller and architect of the tax plan, dismissed Strayhorn's criticism as "goofy rhetoric" in an election year.
He said lawmakers have nothing to worry about in using $1 billion in surplus revenue to help pay for a $6 billion property tax cut. He said growth in the state's economy will make up that revenue in coming years, just as it did when then-Gov. George W. Bush used $1 billion to increase the homestead exemption in 1997.
"Once you take all the political rhetoric out of what you heard, this is right on the money," Sharp said.
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Strayhorn said the plan will be $1.4 billion short next year and similar shortfalls will continue for the next five years. Cumulatively, the plan will cost the state an extra $10.6 billion by 2011, she said.
"At the end of the day, the money must come from somewhere, and we will not have the luxury of $10 billion in surplus funds to fill the gaping hole the Perry tax plan would rip in state finances," she said.
She was off a cool $17 billion, because no one could have predicted how wrong the neoconservatives could get that franchise tax. It should also be noted that this fiscal nightmare was created by John Sharp, a Democrat.
Year after year, fiscally responsible people, on both sides of the aisle, have been howling that this day was coming, and it is finally here.
This can all be solved be going back to the pre-2006 tax code and using our rainy day fund to plug this whole hole of fiscal insanity.
Instead, the issue will become a political football so progressive can yell at the Tea Party, who had nothing to do with the tax code that created the situation. Republicans can scream at Democrats for not making "tough decisions." And everyone will get a chance to hate on Texas.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, our education system will suffer because no one in the capital, be they Republican or Democrat, has the guts to point out this can all be solved with two votes.
One to restore the tax code to fiscal sanity.
Two to use our rainy day fund to stabilize our education system.
But carry on with your Tea Party puppet show, I am sure that will solve everything.