Putting the Brakes on State Spending

Senator Dan Patrick (R-Houston) and Rep. Ken Paxton (R-McKinney) headlined a February 18 press conference for their bills to limit state spending growth to the rate of the State’s population growth plus inflation. Sen. Patrick’s bill is SB 928 and Rep. Paxton’s bill is HB 994.

“When we look at our budget each year, [economists] come up with economic growth numbers. To me, it’s ‘pie in the sky’ from the position of the economist and how he sees the economy.” Sen. Patrick said. “What [this bill] will say is that the budget can not grow more than the total personal state income or the combined rate of population growth and inflation, which ever is less. I believe this will give us a more accurate number most years.”

“In 1978 [the state] passed expenditure limitation and since then there has been a 500% increase in state spending.” said Rep. Paxton. “At the same time, personal income went up about 400%, gross state product up 366%, and the population increased 297%. So you can see state government is growing faster than almost any other measure of what our people are growing at.”

The graphic below shows the amount of state spending since 1990 as compared to population and inflation growth.

Source: Texas Budget Source,

http://www.texasbudgetsource.com/texas-budget-overview

Talmadge Heflin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation noted that if these bills had been in place between 1990 and 2007, “Texas taxpayers would have kept more than $320 billion in their pockets rather than sending them to Austin.” This money could have been returned to Texas taxpayers in the form of property tax relief.

“We did come up with a name for this bill, the California Disaster Avoidance Plan”, quipped Rep. Paxton, a reference to the $42B dollar deficit currently facing the state of California.