This commentary was published at TribTalk. 

​We’ve set some pretty high goals for Texas’ budget for the upcoming biennium. And to achieve them, Texas need to overhaul its arcane and opaque budget-making process.

On Sept. 25, the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Heartland Institute, and 16 other member-groups of the Conservative Texas Budget Coalition held a press conference to introduce its legislative priorities for Texas’ 2019 legislative session.

These groundbreaking priorities would limit government spending below population growth and inflation and provide enormous tax relief for families across the state.

Every odd-numbered year, state lawmakers craft Texas’ two-year budget through the General Appropriations Act, which typically just increases funding to government agencies above their prior biennial levels. If lawmakers suspect that spending increases are unnecessary, the burden of proof is on lawmakers to prove they should spend less.

It’s not an ideal process. And it’s made worse by the fact that lawmakers and their constituents often have no idea whether government agencies are spending their money efficiently. When Texas funds departments, it uses a largely unaccountable process known as strategy-based budgeting.

As the name suggests, lawmakers designate dollars to agencies to accomplish broad strategies such as providing education, delivering health care, or paving roads. While these objectives are certainly important, the process makes it all but impossible for legislators to know whether government agencies are effectively pursuing these goals, let alone accomplishing them.

In fact, many lawmakers have no clue how much spending is dedicated to each agency’s programs, where the money comes from, or whether the money is spent productively.

This lack of transparency is a major reason why spending in Texas has exploded over the last 14 years. State spending is up nearly $15 billion more in the current budget than it would be if it had matched increases in population growth and inflation since 2004. This costs the average Texas family of four more than $1,000 in higher taxes each year.

And even though many lawmakers wish to tame runaway government spending, they lack the necessary information to determine which programs should be reformed, trimmed or eliminated.

One way lawmakers can attain greater fiscal transparency is by replacing Texas’ current strategy-based budget with a program-based budget.

Under a program-based budget, legislators and their constituents can track every taxpayer dollar they send to Texas’ various agencies and which specific programs and initiatives they are funding. This will allow both lawmakers and taxpayers to identify misspent funds and root out inefficiencies.

Another reform to enhance accountability would be to transition Texas’s finances to a zero-based budgeting process. Under this type of budget process, each agency begins with a budget of zero dollars and must make a clear and compelling case to lawmakers why taxpayers should be spending money on its various programs. They must defend its purpose, its goals and how it spends money to achieve these goals.

This increased transparency will allow lawmakers to more effectively scrutinize each agency’s performance and remove programs that fail to serve the public’s needs.

Zero-based budgeting has a long history of successfully trimming wasteful spending.

In 2003, Texas faced a $10 billion budget shortfall and needed to find a way to balance the budget because of a constitutional balanced budget requirement?. In response, then-Gov. Rick Perry sent every government agency a budget of zero dollars and ordered them to find efficiencies to close the state’s deficit.

Not only did these reforms eliminate Texas’ shortfall, they drove agencies to make long-lasting, needed changes to their programs. They cut unnecessary initiatives, streamlined operations and consolidated duplicative programs. Overall, these reforms helped the state balance the budget by reducing spending for the first time since World War II – and not raising taxes.

Zero-based budgeting has also allowed lawmakers to eliminate wasteful spending in Georgia, Chicago, and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

These examples show that proper fiscal transparency and accountability can help Texas’ elected legislators craft a strong conservative Texas budget. Not only would this rein in the excessive size of government, it would help provide an opportunity to deliver substantial tax relief for all Texans.

Achieving the Coalition’s priorities would put the Lone Star State on a path to increased, long-term prosperity.

In this Let People Prosper episode, I cover my updated presentation that provides information about Texas’ economic and fiscal situation, compares Texas with other large states, and suggests key public policy recommendations to strengthen the Texas model so that it can foster more individual liberty and economic prosperity.

Institutions matter as noted by the recent state business tax climate index by the Tax Foundation, which Texas dropped to 15th best nationwide. Texas should increase economic freedom by eliminating unnecessary government barriers to competition to support prosperity.

Watch my explanation of this state-level labor report and other videos at my YouTube channel: Vance Ginn Economics. 

https://www.texaspolicy.com/blog/detail/texas-economic-labor-market-and-fiscal-situation ​

In this Let People Prosper episode, let's discuss the report released by the U.S. Treasury today that notes the federal budget deficit was $779 billion, an increase of 17%, in fiscal year 2018. Again, the evidence shows that government doesn't have a revenue problem but rather a spending problem. 

The largest increase in expenditures was in interest paid on the debt that increased by 23.6% to $325 billion, which is about half of what our taxpayer dollars are used to fund national defense, about one-third of what we pay for Social Security, and about 8% of total federal expenditures. A problem is that interest on the debt will continue to increase at a rapid pace because the national debt looks to continue to grow and the Federal Reserve is expected to raise their targeted federal funds rate, which is currently 2-2.25%. 

Each dollar spent by the government is funded by either taxes, debt, or inflation. Each of these drain resources from the productive private sector. In other words, each dollar crowds out our ability to satisfy our desires and prosper. So, we must be able to prove without doubt that each dollar is spent more effectively by politicians than by individuals in the private sector.

Sure, there are roles for government, but, in my view, the federal government should have three main functions: national defense, justice system, and very few public goods. The total of national defense is just above $600 billion per year, so assuming the rest may run $400 billion per year, that $1 trillion federal budget would be only 25% of the $4.1 trillion spent today. Given a $1 trillion federal budget, the budget surplus would be $2.3 trillion, allowing for substantially lower taxes at every level--preferably one flat rate on final consumption. 

You'll also notice that tax collections did increase even after the large Trump  tax cuts indicating that the robust growth of a dynamic economy supported more revenue, even if it was less than what it could have been otherwise. Moreover, higher tax revenue negates some of the noise by the Congressional Budget Office of a $1.5 trillion deficit over a decade based on a static economic model, but we don't live in a static world and the data today are another revelation of that fact. 

When we consider these details, the crowd out effect of government spending and interest on the $21.5 trillion debt, which is greater than our country's entire economic output of $20 trillion, is a huge cost to the prosperity of our nation that we must get control over before it's too late. But the cost is even greater than that because the $20 trillion GDP includes government spending, which is about 20% of GDP. If you exclude government spending, which there is good reason because it's a transfer of funds from the private sector, then the national debt would be $21.5 trillion/$16 trillion, or 134%! That's what we are looking at trying to pay back over time and is currently more than $65,000 per American. 

As Reinhart and Rogoff wrote in their book This Time Is Different, there's likely a threshold when the debt-to-GDP ratio gets too high such that it hinders economic growth. I don't think that threshold is very high and that we are far above it, and moving further above it quickly unless things change.

We are seeing the benefits of the tax and regulatory reforms along with the benefits of a long--though relatively weak before recently--expansion, but these benefits will quickly expire if government spending is not restrained, trade barriers continue to be imposed, and the national debt continues to rise. 

The best path to let people prosper is by getting rid of government barriers to opportunity, so we must reduce government spending.  

OPINION: CALIFORNIA IS A FAILED MODEL NO MATTER HOW YOU LOOK AT IT
Vance Ginn and Elliott Raia | Director and Research Associate, Center for Economic Prosperity
​
When you have to begin an argument with “depending on how you look at it,” you’re not arguing from a strong position. Yet such has become the answer to the question of, “Is California a good role model?” posed recently in The New York Times.

Even its defenders say California’s prosperity is relative. The good news is that those seeking more concrete progress need only to look to the state that inspired the lone star in the upper-left corner of the Golden State’s flag: Texas.

While the Texas Model of limited government needs improving, it has already proven to be a more sustainable catalyst for job creation and economic prosperity than in California.

Although the idea of limited government may be foreign to many Californians, the Texas Model embraces the principle of reengaging institutions such as family, community, and free markets — institutions that are often undermined by an over-burdensome state.

This is not to say the government has no place in Texas; it does. Nor is this to say that those who have fallen through the cracks don’t deserve help in their times of need; they do.

Rather, the model revives the notion that government’s primary responsibility is to preserve the liberties of families and individuals, instead of attempting to supplant them. In the case of Texas, this also means allowing employers to operate with freedom and without onerous regulation.

The outcome of Texas’ limited government approach is empirically clear. In creating jobs, no one messes with Texas as one in four jobs added nationwide were created in the Lone Star State in the last decade since the Great Recession.

But it’s an even longer period of prosperity. Consider that the average unemployment (U3) rate since 2000 was 5.8 percent in Texas compared with 7.7 percent in California and 6.4 percent nationwide.

Perhaps more telling of the complete picture is the average underutilization(U6) rate, which includes the unemployed, underemployed, and discouraged workers. Given the data available since 2003, Texas averaged 10.5 percent while California averaged 14.3 percent and the United States averaged 11.6 percent.

And poverty is lower in Texas. The Census Bureau’s supplemental poverty index that adjusts for regional costs of living differences and government transfer payments places California’s 19 percent poverty rate the highest nationwide whereas Texas’ rate of 14.7 percent is near the U.S. average of 14.1 percent.

With a relatively light tax burden on employers in Texas compared with California, Texas’ employers have the freedom to innovate and grow. Although the current level of taxation is a stark departure from West Coast philosophy, Texans already see where improvement can be made as efforts to corral skyrocketing property taxes are underway to maintain their economic canter.

While taxes play a role in overall government intrusion, burdensome regulations do, too. The Texas Model, while still not free of all unnecessary regulation and corporate welfare, places more faith and decision-making in markets, where individuals — not politicians — decide the best way to satisfy their desires.

Consider the energy industry in Texas.

While the state has yet to completely eliminate its wind subsidies, it has, in general, taken a more moderated position on industry regulation than the California model. Instead of coercing consumers towards a source of energy favored by bureaucrats and politicians, Texas strengthens its power generation, reliability and cost efficiency by allowing consumers to access a wide energy portfolio.

As a result, Texans pay half the price for their electricity than their Californian counterparts, while also not having to contend with potential rolling blackouts whenever the sun doesn’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow.

While energy is just one example, the California Model’s policies highlight why the state has nearly 20 percent of its population in poverty. No matter how well-intentioned, when government entangles itself in the lives of individuals and tries to supersede other institutions that may be more effective, tribulation soon follows.

Will the nation follow California down a road to serfdom, or, more recently, follow Texas down a road to liberty? That question remains undecided.

But if the mass migration of individuals and businesses out of California and into Texas is any indication, the trend is clear that institutions matter. When institutions in civil society are strengthened by limiting government, people prosper.

Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is director of the Center for Economic Prosperity and senior economist. Elliott Raia is a research associate. Both work at the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Read the Foundation’s latest report for more.
​

​In this Let People Prosper episode, I take a little more time than usual (hope you'll watch the entire episode) to share what economists like Adam Smith, David Ricardo, Daniel Hamermesh, Paul Krugman, and Milton Friedman said about international trade.

In summary, people prosper from trade (see my paper here) and I'm cautiously optimistic about the revised version of NAFTA which is now being called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), especially with the reduction of some foreign trade uncertainty, but have many reservations of the toll the increased trade barriers put on the auto sector will have on Americans.

​The legislatures of each of these countries will not have 60 days to review and vote. Let us not forget the benefits of free trade and find ways to reduce trade barriers instead of erecting more. 

#LetPeopleProsper