It didn’t increase.
This state budget deal is a victory for all Texans –and especially for the Texans who worked hard over the past several months to remind our legislators that they wanted a fiscally conservative state budget. The announced budget deal is a win for Texas on three specific points:
• It does not use a single penny of the rainy day fund for the next biennium.
• It does not raise taxes.
• It does represent the first all-funds reduction to a biennial state budget in the past half-century.
“What happened in the Texas Legislature this session is more than just a victory for Texans. It’s a victory for America. Texas already leads the way in job creation, economic vitality, and economic liberty. Now Texas is leading the way in the most important cause facing our country: the need to live within our means. “Today, in Austin, Texas, the men and women of our legislature showed it can be done. That’s a tremendous accomplishment for Texas –and it’s a shining beacon of hope for America.”
“The final product is not as spartan as the initial budget proposal. That’s because some additional money was found, some payments for schools and Medicaid were pushed to a later date and the rainy day fund was tapped to pay for the $4 billion deficit in the current budget, freeing up that amount for spending in 2012-13.”
“State aid for public schools, which has garnered much of the attention since January, is still $4 billion short of what school districts are owed under current law.
But the amount of state dollars in the education budget actually went up $3 billion, or 9 percent, from current levels to make up for a large chunk of the federal stimulus that was used to help fund schools in 2009.”
This is from the 5/27 Austin Statesman. You may be right about the increase, but you also may be wrong depending on the amount of the Medicaid and school accounting gimmicks. As for the use of the rainy day fund, the money is fungible. They could have used tax revenues to take care of the current budget shortfall and have used the rainy day fund for the next biennium. They did the reverse, but it is just an accounting matter. The bottom line is that they didn’t cut spending enough to avoid using the rainy day fund.
The House budget would have been better, but the Senate, as usual, betrayed us again. Dewhurst shouldn’t have a future in Texas politics.