The video lays out an important part of the story for the nation. Let me explain how the budget crisis links up to the Texas crisis. Hint: the false logic used to defend Republican policy choices are the same. Please don't be part of the disease, be part of a the cure....
I was at a rally in opposition to the insane cuts in public education. A woman was introduced to me as a future candidate for her school board. The first words out of her mouth were that she knew where the real waste and corruption was and when she was elected she would go after it. I thought to myself that even if you win office, you will lose the war over education priorities , because you will be stuck debating corruption - how much and what kind . That debate is always a home field advantage for those who want to kill public education.
She was not in the mood for a rational discussion of this matter and I could see that there was no point in engaging her.
You, dear reader are different. Starting now, whenever you discuss the present fiscal crisis in our state DO NOT fall into the "waste and corruption" trap, especially not about our schools.
If you bite and start the "ain't it awful contest" that goes with the waste meme - the contest where you try to top their story of waste and corruption- remember you have lost and they have won. They, the unthinking low information voters, the willful acolytes of the Republican talking machine, the rich fat cat bank-rollers of "Conservative Causes", they have won.
They have won because there is NEVER an end to the search for fraud and misspent funds. Here's a challenge. Name an institution, public or private that has NEVER had some mismanagement of its funds or resources. Better if you can think of one, how do you prove it if I challenge you?
Get the point? It is an old trick to compare the prefect world you advocate with the imperfect one we live in and then condemn that imperfect world. The advocate then offers, if elected or supported , to replace the evils of the real world with his prefect theoretical solution . Somehow, this never works out. Remember Soviet and Chinese Communism . Such rhetoric about freeing the exploited workers, the state withering away, etc.
It never happened, it can never happen because it is impossible. Human beings run our institutions, and they can be no perfect ones. You will always lose a debate where you let the other side saddle you with defending the fact that there is no more fat to cut or waste to weed out, no more unworthy workers to fire, etc. There always are and , especially now, this is essentially irrelevant to our problems.
What you need to do is re-frame any discussion of our fiscal crisis with the first words out of your mouth. You will not convert the true believers, the unthinking Borg who repeat the "common wisdom" of the pathetic mass media, but you may give the uncommitted and the fair minded something to think about.
About 1/3 of Americans are independents politically. They are our hope. That is why the response to "waste and corruption" with regard to the fiscal crisis, state, local or national is "There is no such thing as a free lunch. We can't have quality schools or roads or anything else if we don't pay the cost. We are in this together and that means that everybody should pay their fair share.
The problem is agreeing upon a fair way of providing the resources we need to maintain our quality of life. How do we pay for good schools, world class public transportation and roads, reasonable and equitable access to health-care, just and sufficient provisions for the weak, the old , the poor?
Focusing on who is putting an extra cheeseburger on their public expense account won't make any difference if we don't agree to sound, dependable ways of regular funding for public necessities. In the case of Texas, we have been living with gerry-rigged state budgets ever since 2006 when Perry cut property taxes and didn't fill the income hole he created.
Our only way out of this mess is to agree upon fair taxes, fairly administered. Especially in Texas where we have been "cutting the fat" under Rick Perry and his well to do friends for over 10 years, there is NO fat left. Now we are cutting into this state's bones and muscles.
Hold those who say otherwise accountable. Make them show / prove that their merciless cuts to programs for our schools, the elderly, our middle class families are THE ONLY WAY. They can't because the problem is not and never has been super high levels of waste. It is the fact that they have sold us on the idea that we can have our cake and eat it too. Well the bill for that cake is due now, and want to tell us the the solution is to make deny services to our most necessary programs. The crisis is an artificial one and the solution is just self-serving policy dressed up as necessity.
After quantifying how bad things are he writes this:
These numbers are horrible. They testify to human misery and to the empty, self-congratulatory boastfulness of Texas's leaders over the past decade. Earlier today I wrote about what Rick Perry is running for. He ought to be running FROM.
Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst responded by throwing the LBB under the nearest bus, headlining his press release with this pass-the-buck statement: "Lt. Governor Dewhurst Sets the Record Straight on LBB Report."
How does Dewhurst "set the record straight?" He says, in effect, that things would be even worse if the state raised taxes:
"The LBB report clearly shows that job creation is tied to the size of the economy, not the budget. What it does not calculate, however, are the dramatic job losses Texas would suffer if the Legislature raised taxes just as our economy is starting to rebound. You cannot expect to grow the economy and create jobs by growing bigger government."
Well, apparently you can't grow the economy by going $27 billion in the hole, either. Perry, Dewhurst, Craddick, and, yes, Straus - they have proven that they are so wed to their ideology they will let the state go down the drain rather than take responsibility for the carnage that their policies have produced.
TPPF's Talmadge Heflin also weighed in:
"The LBB's baseline scenario assumes that Texas continues to support levels of spending where government has grown at almost three times the rate of population growth plus inflation over the last two decades, and has available revenue to match that bloated spending. Texas doesn't have the available revenue to support that - and to get it would mean ruinous tax hikes that aren't on the table."
Heflin suffers from what I call "political anorexia syndrome." He looks at state government and sees only fat, when everyone else in the known universe knows that it is lean. Don't take my word for it. The Tax Foundation says that in fiscal year 2007, Texas ranked 50th among the states in per capita spending ($3,831). No other state is even close. Texas is the only state in the union that spends less than $4,000 per person. To describe Texas's spending as "bloated" destroys his, and TPPF's credibility. Not that this is going to change either of them.
Straus also weighed in:
"I question the validity of the assumption that requiring government to live within its means will lead to a downturn in the economy - in fact, the opposite is true. The best way to jump-start growth is for the Legislature to keep taxes low and regulations reasonable to provide the opportunity for business to grow and thrive in Texas."
I'm all for government living within its means. I accept that Texans want a low-tax, low-service state. But it is one thing for government to live within its means, and it is quite another for it to be intentionally starved of revenue by its leaders to the point of a $27 billion budget hole. This budget crisis is not a natural result of the economic cycle. It is a manmade disaster created by the indifference of its leaders.
There isn't enough lipstick in the world to make this pig look good.
UPDATE: Senior Republican Senator is stricken with a bout of sanity!!
As The Tax Turns Ogden included sharp criticism of any budget that doesn't fix the state's massive structural deficit. Chronicle/Express-News Bureau Chief Peggy Fikac reports:
Ogden said at the late Monday hearing that he would "feel a little bit better if businesses who are here testifying against this would help us fix the business tax. But it just seems like, well, we can't fix that, either.
"So, we're going to continue to struggle, trying to get a budget that will work for the state of Texas that will also balance. But any budget that we pass, even the budget that the House passed, has a large structural deficit that we have failed to address," Ogden said. "And I think, as government officials, we're failing in our duty to the public."
Ogden said Tuesday that by the structural deficit, he means the approximately $2 billion annually that the state business tax is short of projections made when it was overhauled in 2006.
To be fair, the Chronicle indicates that Senator Ogden has been complaining about this for awhile. Nice to know that not all Republicans are totally clueless, although I honestly don't see how the business tax can be our salvation. Beyond the 2 billion dollar hole, we have all kinds of other structural funding, and more to the point, fairness issues.
