 Written Testimony Submitted to the Texas House Select Committee on Health Care Affordability
Chairman Frank and Members of the Committee, Thank you for examining health care affordability. Texans do not need another hearing to know the system is broken. They feel it in premiums, deductibles, surprise bills, delayed appointments, narrow networks, and employers paying more for coverage while workers take home less. The North Star should be simple: restore the relationship between patients and doctors through voluntary exchange, transparent value, personal responsibility, and real competition. Every reform should be judged by whether it moves Texas closer to that goal or deeper into today’s government-dominated, third-party payment maze. Texas and America do not have a fully socialist national health care system like some countries, where the government directly owns or centrally controls nearly everything. But we do have a deeply distorted, mostly socialized system. Government programs dominate payment. Federal tax policy pushes people into employer-sponsored insurance. Regulations smother doctors. Third-party payers stand between patients and care. Prices are fake, hidden, or irrelevant to the person receiving the service. That is not a market. It is managed care through bureaucracies. The cost is staggering. National health expenditures reached $5.3 trillion in 2024, or $15,474 per person, consuming 18 percent of GDP. Medicare spending hit $1.118 trillion, Medicaid spending reached $931.7 billion, and private health insurance spending climbed to $1.645 trillion. Hospital spending alone reached $1.635 trillion, while physician and clinical services exceeded $1.109 trillion. Health spending is projected to grow faster than GDP through 2033, pushing health care toward 20.3 percent of GDP. That is not just because America spends too much but also because patients control too little. In 2025, the average employer-sponsored family premium reached $26,993, up 6 percent in one year, while workers directly contributed $6,850 on average. The broader 2025 Milliman Medical Index estimates the annual health care cost for a family of four in a typical employer-sponsored plan at $35,119. This is a family budget crisis, a wage crisis, and a competitiveness crisis. The root cause is the third-party payment system. And one of the original policy mistakes behind that system is the federal tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance. Employer-paid premiums are excluded from federal income and payroll taxes, which lowers the after-tax cost of compensation paid as insurance instead of wages and helps explain why most families get coverage through employers rather than owning portable, patient-controlled coverage themselves. This tax distortion ties insurance to jobs, rewards more expensive coverage, hides true compensation costs, and separates patients from prices. That mistake should guide the committee’s thinking: do not add more layers to a bad system. Remove the distortions that made the system bad. The Americans for Tax Reform’s Empower Patients Initiative, my health care policy guide, the Empower Patients website, and the book with Dr. Deane Waldman, Become an Empowered Patient, all point in the same direction: empower patients, restore doctors, and get government out of the way. Cost Drivers: The BURRDEN Is the DiseaseThe committee’s first charge asks about statutory, regulatory, and administrative burdens, along with fraud, waste, and abuse. That is where reform should begin. A major JAMA review estimated waste in U.S. health care at $760 billion to $935 billion annually, including administrative complexity, pricing failures, poor care coordination, overtreatment, fraud, and abuse. The issue is what I call BURRDEN: bureaucracy, unnecessary rules and regulations, red tape, directives, enforcement mandates, and noncompliance costs. This total is likely about $2 trillion per year. Every hour a doctor spends coding, complying, or begging for prior authorization is an hour not spent with a patient. Every dollar spent feeding the administrative machine is a dollar not spent lowering prices or improving care. Texas should reduce mandates, protect independent physicians, expand safe scope-of-practice flexibility, speed licensing recognition, reduce certificate-like barriers, and make direct patient-doctor contracting easier. Texas already recognizes that direct primary care is not insurance. That principle should be expanded, protected, and treated as a model. Insurance Design: Coverage Is Not Care Insurance should protect against major, unexpected expenses. It should not control routine care. Today’s system turns patients into bystanders. High deductibles alone do not create consumer choice. A family with a large deductible, no clear cash price, and no account they control is not empowered. They are trapped. Texas should encourage direct primary care, cash-based specialty care, catastrophic insurance, and larger, more flexible Health Savings Accounts. Employers should be free to offer direct care options that provide routine care without routing every interaction through insurers. The goal should not be more “coverage” on paper. The goal should be affordable care when Texans need it. Medicaid: Block Grant It and Let Texas Lead Medicaid should help only the most vulnerable Texans, but the current model is fiscally unsustainable and often poor at delivering timely access. It too often forces patients into a government-centered system with limited provider participation and expensive hospital-based care. Texas should pursue a federal Medicaid block grant with maximum flexibility. Then Texas should build its own model around patient-controlled accounts, direct primary care, charitable care, community clinics, and incentives for responsible use. Medicaid recipients should have health care dollars they can use wisely, not just a government card that too often leaves hospitals as the default option. A Texas Medicaid model should reward prevention, primary care, price awareness, and patient responsibility. Washington should help fund it and then get out of the way. Consolidation: Fix the Incentives The committee is right to examine consolidation. Hospital and provider consolidation can reduce choice, weaken competition, and raise prices. But consolidation is often a symptom of bad policy. Independent doctors sell to hospitals because compliance costs, payment rules, and contracting burdens make independence harder. Hospitals buy physician practices because facility-based billing can pay more. Insurers, providers, and middlemen consolidate because the rules reward scale over service. The solution is not to micromanage every transaction from Austin. The solution is to restore competition: remove barriers to entry, protect independent doctors, expand direct care, allow cash-pay alternatives, and stop rewarding large systems simply because they know how to navigate bureaucracy. The same applies to pharmacy benefit managers. PBMs are not the root problem. They are an invention of the current broken third-party payment system. Texas should punish fraud, deception, and anticompetitive conduct, but scapegoating PBMs will not fix the underlying disease. Fix the money flow, and many middleman problems shrink. Transparency: Helpful, But Not the North Star Price transparency is useful only if the price is real. A hospital charge is not a cash price. A negotiated insurer rate is not necessarily what the patient pays. A posted estimate may exclude facility fees, labs, imaging, anesthesia, or complications. Transparency can help, but transparency inside a distorted payment system can become just another compliance exercise. The North Star is not merely revealing prices. It is creating a market where prices matter. Patients need real cash prices, money they control, and the freedom to choose another provider. The Texas Path Forward Texas should not copy Washington’s broken model. Texas should lead with first principles. A serious reform agenda should:
Health care reform should begin with a moral premise: patients are not billing codes, and doctors are not clerks for insurers or government agencies. They are people engaged in one of the most important relationships in society. The committee should use this North Star: Does this reform move power from bureaucracies to patients, from third-party payers to doctors, and from government control to voluntary exchange? If yes, Texas should advance it. If no, Texas should reject it. Get the government out of the way where it does not belong. Put patients in control of their health care dollars. Let doctors heal. Let markets work. Let Texans prosper. Glad to help. Thank you, Vance Ginn, PhD President, Ginn Economic Consulting Related resources include the Empower Patients Initiative, Empower Patients, my health care policy guide, my work at Ginn Economic Consulting, and Become an Empowered Patient in English and Spanish.
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 Position Statement: I support HB 73 as a critical first step to rein in local government spending and property tax growth, with recommended improvements to ensure consistency, accountability, and stronger taxpayer protections.
Written Testimony of Dr. Vance Ginn Before the House Committee on Intergovernmental Affairs In Support of House Bill 73 (With Recommended Improvements) August 22, 2025 Chairman Bell and Members of the Committee: My name is Dr. Vance Ginn, president of Ginn Economic Consulting and a proud native Texan. Thank you for the opportunity to submit written testimony in support of House Bill 73. Texans are burdened with some of the highest property taxes in the nation, and while the state has provided relief, those gains are too often erased by unchecked local government spending. With no limit in place, local budgets continue to climb, driving taxes higher and debt upward. Families and businesses deserve better. That is why HB 73 is so important. For the first time, it establishes a maximum local spending limit tied to state population growth plus inflation. This is the most reliable and simple measure of sustainable budgeting. It ensures the government doesn’t grow faster than the people’s ability to pay. Using a statewide standard matters. HB 46, also before you, applies population and inflation at every local level, which creates a patchwork of diverse rules. HB 73 avoids this by adopting one clear statewide metric, the same measure Texas should apply at the state level in both statute and constitution. Consistency matters for taxpayers and accountability. Still, HB 73 can be improved in three ways:
Econ 101 teaches us that the government has no money of its own. Every dollar spent is first taken from taxpayers through taxes, debt, or inflation. The real problem is not revenue but spending. When spending exceeds population growth and inflation, it erodes private sector growth, leaving families poorer and businesses weaker. By contrast, a sound limit keeps government in check, preserves economic opportunity, and strengthens prosperity. HB 73 is a strong step in the right direction. With the improvements I’ve outlined—drawing from HB 46’s two-thirds provision, closing loopholes, and ensuring broad coverage—Texas can lead the nation in fiscal discipline. We can give families peace of mind that relief passed in Austin won’t be erased by excess at the local level. Thank you for your leadership on this important issue and for the chance to share my perspective. Testimony Before the Texas House Committee on Public Education on HB 3 - School Choice Bill3/10/2025  Chairman Buckley and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to submit this testimony on HB 3. My name is Dr. Vance Ginn, and I am an economist focused on fiscal policy, education reform, and tax policy to let people prosper in Texas and beyond. I appreciate the work this committee is doing to improve educational opportunities for Texas students. As someone who has worked on the budget, school finance, and property tax reforms in Texas for more than a decade and worked on the federal budget while at the White House, I would like to share some of my expertise with you on where we have been, where we are, and where we should be. The Broken Texas School Finance System  Texas' school finance system is overfunded and fundamentally flawed. Taxpayers now spend nearly $95 billion annually on K-12 education, yet student outcomes continue to decline. The maze of state funding formulas is outdated and complex and should be improved, if not abolished.  Since 2013, per-student spending has increased by 48 percent, outpacing 35 percent inflation, while 8-grade math proficiency has dropped by 40 percent. Despite record spending, millions of students remain stuck in failing government schools.  The problem is not a lack of funding—it's the costly, bureaucratic government school monopoly. In fact, the money isn’t going so much to the classroom as it is to administration, either through a large increase in their number or to pay their hefty base pay. More money is not the answer for declining outcomes and excessive cost; competition is.    HB 3: A Step Forward, But Texas Can Do Better
I support the concepts of HB 3 because it expands school choice, but Texas must do more to ensure every family has access to educational freedom. HB 3 would cover less than 1.5 percent of Texas’ 6.3 million students, leaving 90 percent trapped in the government school system. HB 3 has an escalator that would gradually cover students on a waitlist. However, the current legislature can’t appropriate the amount needed to fund the waitlist with the included funding mechanism, as it will be up to each legislature. HB 3 imposes too many restrictions on accredited institutions and education-related purchases, making it more bureaucratic and costly than necessary. Meanwhile, HB 2, part of the “Texas Two-Step” package, seeks to invest over $8 billion in government schools. It raises the basic allotment by $220 for every student above the $6,160 amount enacted by HB 3 in 2019, reinforcing the monopoly instead of fostering improvement. HB 3 is a better approach than SB 2, the school choice bill in the Senate, because it is more universal and does not require students to switch from public to private schools to qualify. However, it must be improved to empower families and not further entrench the broken system. How to Fund Universal ESAs and Reduce Property Taxes Texas should replace the outdated school finance model with a universal, parent-directed ESA program. As an example of an ideal scenario, every Texas student should receive a $12,000 ESA at a cost to taxpayers of $75 billion (or closer to $15,000 if we used the entire $95 billion on government schools today) to use on approved educational expenses. These would include Traditional public school costs, Private school tuition, Charter school costs, Homeschooling materials, Tutoring and special education services, and Career training and college prep. By shifting from a district-based to a student-based model, Texas can empower families with the freedom to choose the best education for their children. Texas should transition to universal ESAs for all 6.3 million students, replacing the inefficient government school finance model. This would save taxpayers nearly $20 billion annually and reduce M&O property taxes by two-thirds. Most funding would come from state-collected revenue, primarily sales taxes. This approach ensures a more efficient use of taxpayer dollars, a direct funding model that prioritizes students, not bureaucracy, and lower property taxes while providing sufficient education funding. Rather than continuing to fund a failing monopoly, Texas should use existing state revenue to empower parents directly and ensure every child has access to a quality education. The Impact of School Choice on Teachers and the Economy Expanding school choice is not only about helping students—it also benefits teachers and the economy. Today, teachers are stuck in a monopsony system where government schools control salaries, limiting their ability to negotiate higher wages. By introducing real competition, teachers would have more bargaining power and higher salaries based on market demand. My estimates show that teachers would see at least a $14,000 increase in pay and some high quality teachers could see an increase as much as $28,000. School choice fosters competition and innovation, leading to better student outcomes, economic growth, and respect for parental rights. How to Improve HB 3 and What to Avoid
Conclusion: Texas Must Lead in Education Reform The future of Texas education depends on empowering families, not expanding bureaucracy. A universal ESA system is the fiscally responsible, pro-student, and pro-taxpayer solution.
Texas can lead the nation in school choice and education reform. The committee should pass HB 3 with necessary improvements as outlined above, reject HB 2, and ensure no more money is funneled into an already bloated government school monopoly. Thank you for your time and consideration. Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, a contributor at over 20 think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility, and a board member of Texas Policy Research. Dr. Ginn was previously a lecturer at multiple higher education institutions, chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and chief economist at the first Trump White House's Office of Management and Budget, June 2019 to May 2020. He earned his doctorate in economics at Texas Tech University. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn and get his research at vanceginn.com. Testimony Before the Texas House Committee on Ways and Means for HB 8 for Property Tax Compression3/3/2025  Thank you for the opportunity to submit testimony supporting HB 8, with a few additional changes needed to make it long-lasting relief. I am Dr. Vance Ginn, president of Ginn Economic Consulting and contributor to more than 20 think tanks, including Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. I appreciate the chance to write on the urgent need for property tax relief, which should include a clear path to eliminating school district maintenance and operations (M&O) property taxes—the largest portion of Texans’ property tax bills. Despite claims of historic tax cuts, Texans continue to see rising property taxes because state and local governments refuse to control excessive spending.  In the last session, the Legislature allocated $12.7 billion in new property tax relief, yet property tax bills still increased across the state. Much of this so-called relief was tied up in raising the homestead exemption from $40,000 to $100,000 rather than focusing on tax rate compression, and local governments continued hiking tax levies. This was not the largest tax cut in Texas history—property taxes didn’t go down; they went up. Texans will never see meaningful, lasting relief until lawmakers address reckless spending and local tax hikes.  Even after SB 2 was passed in 2019 to limit property tax growth, loopholes have allowed local governments to continue raising taxes without real accountability. These loopholes must be closed, and spending must be controlled to ensure taxpayers get the promised relief. The only way to achieve meaningful property tax reduction is to aggressively compress school district M&O tax rates while requiring local governments to lower their property tax rates instead of shifting the burden elsewhere. Texas has a $24 billion surplus of overcollected taxpayer money and $28 billion in the Rainy Day Fund, yet much of it is being hoarded instead of used for tax relief. These funds should be returned to taxpayers by eliminating school district M&O property taxes. If this money isn’t used for permanent property tax reduction, it will only encourage more government growth, making tax cuts even more challenging in the future. The problem is not a lack of funding—it is out-of-control spending. Since 1996, property taxes have grown at an average rate of 6.1 percent per year, far exceeding the rate of population growth and inflation. Texans now pay more than $50,000 per student in total school-related costs, which includes maintenance and operations, debt, and unfunded teacher pension liabilities, yet student performance has declined. Per-student spending of more than $15,00 annually has increased 48 percent since 2011, while eighth-grade math proficiency has dropped by 40 percent. The state cannot continue pouring more money into an inefficient government school monopoly and expect better results. The best way to lower property taxes is to spend less and compress tax rates, using state funds to buy down school district M&O tax rates until they reach zero. Governor Greg Abbott has called for at least $10 billion in property tax relief, yet HB 8 only provides $2.8 billion in new compression. The other $3 billion proposed for compression is in HB 1, the budget, because of HB 3 in 2019. These actions are insufficient to prevent local governments from undoing tax cuts through higher spending and other tax increases. The Legislature must ensure that local governments do not raise other taxes or debt as school district M&O rates are reduced. Texas must impose strict spending limits at the state and local levels to prevent excessive government growth. The most effective way to do this is by capping all spending at a maximum rate based on the prior three-year annual average of population growth plus inflation, as outlined by Americans for Tax Reform’s Sustainable Budget Project. This ensures that the government does not grow faster than the taxpayers’ ability to fund it. However, given recent spending excesses, Texas should go further and freeze the budget with zero growth or even implement spending cuts to ensure tax relief is maximized, as highlighted by Texans for Fiscal Responsibility.  Other states are aggressively cutting taxes and putting income taxes on a path to elimination, meaning Texas cannot afford to sit back and assume it will always be the country's economic powerhouse. States like Louisiana, Iowa, and North Carolina have made structural changes to lower tax burdens, making their economies more competitive. If Texas continues growing government instead of cutting taxes, it risks losing its economic edge. The best way to remain a leader is to cut spending, eliminate school district M&O property taxes, and reject tax shifts that only move the burden around rather than reduce it. One tax shift that must be rejected is raising the homestead exemption. Lawmakers have already increased it to $100,000, yet property tax bills continue rising. This highlights that exemptions do not solve the problem—they only shift the tax burden onto renters, businesses, and other property owners. Instead of playing favorites with exemptions, the state should focus on eliminating school district M&O property taxes through compression, which benefits all taxpayers.
Additionally, the loopholes in SB 2 from 2019 must be closed to ensure that tax relief is real and long-lasting. Local governments have exploited these loopholes to continue raising taxes without voter approval. The Legislature should take the following steps to fix these issues:
Without these reforms, Texans will continue seeing their property tax bills rise no matter how much relief the state provides. Local governments have become too aggressive in raising taxes and spending without restraint, and unless these issues are addressed, they will continue exploiting technicalities to tax Texans more. Texas must commit to cutting state and local spending, compressing school district M&O property taxes until they are eliminated, and preventing local governments from shifting the tax burden elsewhere. This will provide permanent tax relief, keep Texas competitive, and ensure that families can afford to own their homes without fearing rising property taxes. Instead of expanding government, lawmakers should cut waste, eliminate fraud, and return money to taxpayers. Texas should not hoard billions in tax dollars while families struggle with rising costs. The state should also reduce severance taxes on oil and gas companies, ensuring that Texas remains the world's energy leader and that money stays in the pockets of those who earned it. Texans deserve real tax relief, not more political games. HB 8 must be strengthened to prevent local governments from undoing tax cuts, enforcing strict spending caps, and dedicating more surplus money to eliminating school property taxes. Now is the time to act and make Texas the best place to live, work, and raise a family. Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting and a contributor to more than 20 think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. Dr. Ginn was previously a lecturer at multiple higher education institutions, chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and chief economist at the first Trump White House's Office of Management and Budget. He earned his doctorate in economics at Texas Tech University. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn and get more of his research at vanceginn.com.  Chairman Bettencourt and members of the committee, Thank you for holding this hearing. I am Dr. Vance Ginn, president of Ginn Economic Consulting, Texan, and father who is concerned about Texas's housing affordability crisis. While the state can’t address general inflation and interest rates, as those have been failures of Washington, policymakers can tackle restrictive local zoning and high property taxes. First, restrictive zoning regulations restrict the housing supply, driving up housing prices faster than many can afford.
Second, regarding the 11th most burdensome property taxes, achieving affordable housing means committing to eliminating them. 
These reforms can benefit Texans, but achieving them will require political courage. Combining local zoning reform with a path to eliminate property taxes provides a practical approach to housing affordability that the Legislature can accomplish in the next session. Thank you for considering these ideas to remove government obstacles and make housing affordable for Texans. Vance Ginn, Ph.D., is president of Ginn Economic Consulting and contributor to more than 15 think tanks, including Americans for Tax Reform and Texans for Fiscal Responsibility. Dr. Ginn was previously a lecturer at multiple higher education institutions, chief economist at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and chief economist at the White House's Office of Management and Budget. He earned his doctorate in economics at Texas Tech University. Follow him on X.com at @VanceGinn and get more of his research at vanceginn.com.  Originally posted at The Sentinal. Read my full testimony here or watch it at YouTube below at minute 38:00. Kansas is spending too much and needs to reform the way it creates the yearly budget, was the message Dr. Vance Ginn — a senior fellow at the Kansas Policy Institute, told a state legislature committee on Oct. 2, 2024. Dr. Vance Ginn Ginn, who was also the former chief economist in the White House Office of Management and Budget and is president of Ginn Economic Consulting, told the Special Committee on Budget Process and Development the “main problem of government” is how much is spent. “Unfortunately, in Kansas, there’s too much that’s being spent,” he said. “I know that’s why you’re looking at budget process reforms and how to spend less over time to make sure that you have the best use of taxpayer money that’s coming out of the productive private sector.” Ginn pointed to Colorado as a good example. “When you look at Colorado, which has (gone) from red to purple to blue over time, one of the things that’s helped them to restrain spending, no matter what the political situation has been, is their Taxpayer Bill of Rights,” Ginn said. “TABOR, as it’s called, is a spending limit that limits the growth of the budget to no more than population growth plus inflation, which is a good measure of the average taxpayer’s ability to pay for government spending. “Now it’s been weakened a little bit over time by some courts and by politicians and things of that nature, but it still has been able to hold their spending to population and inflation and keep taxes down lower than it otherwise would be.” Ginn noted that other countries are doing something similar as well. “We’ve also seen spending limits work in other countries. Sweden and others. The Swiss debt break is another example of that, ” he said. “So it’s not just the states, which I think is important, as we’re talking about here in Kansas today, but also to look at what other countries have done.” Ginn also suggested looking at a longer-term budget — if perhaps not as long as the federal government’s 10-year budget projections. “I don’t know how far in advance you want to go, but maybe a couple of years, two or three years, I think looks good to figure out what’s happening for the future,” he said. “How are the trends looking for different areas of the budget, whether you look at health care, education, transportation, I think those things are really important. It’s something that’s been able to work in Florida to help to restrain the spending over time.” Ginn suggested other measures as well, including independent efficiency audits, such as Texas uses, to help find waste within state departments. He also said the state should look at an annual budget analysis. “So you have the budget that’s passed, but then look at it throughout each year to ensure that those dollars are being spent wisely and that we’re getting the effectiveness — the intended goals are being met for each one of these programs as well,” he said. Ginn is also an advocate of “zero-based” and “priority-based budgeting,” as well. “I think it is really important to adopt priority-based budgeting,” Ginn said. “Zero-based budgeting is important. Start from scratch and build your way up. It’s kind of costly, it’s time consuming to do some of those things. But there’s also performance-based budgeting to make sure that you’re getting the performance out of these. So a combination of those is priority-based budgeting, which I think, if you’re looking at the annual reviews, would be a great opportunity for you all to make some suggestions, make some changes.” Spending per resident in 2022Kansas spent $4,941 per resident in 2022, excluding federal and debt-related spending, as reported by the National Association of State Budget Officers. By comparison, Colorado spent $3,935 per resident. Missouri ($3,110) and Oklahoma ($3,404) also spent a lot less per resident to provide the same services as Kansas. Only Nebraska spent more, at $5,268 per resident. Just getting to Colorado’s level of efficiency would save taxpayers almost $3 billion annually. Responsible Kansas Budget would meet many of Ginn’s suggestions Ginn pushed something KPI has proposed for two years now. “The Responsible Kansas Budget” is a model to achieve a sustainable budget through tax-and-expenditure limits based on transparency and performance-based budgeting, which will rein in government spending to avoid deficits. In 2022, KPI released its first edition of the Responsible Kansas Budget for 2023. The model proposed a limit on All Funds (state funds plus federal funds) appropriations in 2023 at $21.0 billion based on limiting spending increases to the combined rate of population growth and inflation. Instead, the Legislature approved an All-Funds budget of $22.9 billion—nearly $2 billion more than the RKB. The RKB uses a simple calculation of finding the growth rate of the state’s resident population and adding it to the growth rate of the state’s Consumer Price Index [a common measure of inflation] to set maximum appropriation limits. Indeed, from fiscal 2005, through fiscal 2023, state appropriations grew from $7.2 billion to 17.1 billion. Had the RKB’s appropriation limits been in place, the growth would have been to “only” $11.4 billion, saving Kansas taxpayers roughly $5.7 billion.  Originally published at Texans for Fiscal Responsibility and full testimony there.
The following piece is taken from Dr. Vance Ginn’s Testimony to the Texas House Select Committee on Sustainable Property Tax Relief: Over the last decade, the Texas Legislature has made some progress in providing property tax relief, but the housing affordability crisis demands more action. Moreover, property taxes are not just a financial burden but are fundamentally immoral as they force Texans to perpetually rent from the government, functioning as unrealized capital gains and wealth taxes paid annually. This system makes it difficult for many families to build or pass on a legacy. As noted in the following three charts, property taxes have risen too fast for too long. Read the full testimony with charts and data here: https://www.vanceginn.com/letpeopleprosper/testimony-before-the-texas-senate-committee-on-finance-presented-by-vance-ginn-phd-on-september-4-2024
 Chair Huffman and Members of the Committee, Thank you for the opportunity to testify today. I am Dr. Vance Ginn, president of Ginn Economic Consulting. Over the last decade, the Texas Legislature has made progress in property tax relief, but the affordability crisis demands more action. Property taxes are not just a financial burden—they are fundamentally immoral. They force Texans to perpetually rent from the government, functioning as unrealized capital gains and wealth taxes paid annually. This system makes it difficult for families with low or fixed incomes to build and pass on a legacy.  Last session, despite a $32.7 billion surplus, new property tax relief was limited to just $12.7 billion. And the state budget increased by a record 32% in state funds from GAA appropriations to appropriations  Although this was the second-largest tax relief amount in Texas history, property taxes increased by $165 million last year from excessive spending by local governments.  The path forward is clear: spend less and reduce property tax rates rather than complicating the housing market with homestead exemptions, discounts, and abatements that make elimination more difficult. To eliminate property taxes, consider three simple steps:
 This three-step process will help curb soaring property taxes and pave the way for a more prosperous future without property taxes to preserve life, liberty, and prosperity. Thank you for your time, and I’m glad to answer any questions.
 The hearing is scheduled for today at 10 am ET at Longworth House Office Building: Hearing on the U.S. Tax Code Subsidizing Green Corporate Handouts and the Chinese Communist Party. Below is the video of the full hearing (my statement starts at time 27:30 with other comments throughout the 4-hour-long hearing). And below that is my written testimony based on this recent research on The Inflation Reduction Act's Costly New Tax Credits for Electric Vehicle Batteries and the policy brief. |
Vance Ginn, Ph.D.
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