Priorities Matter in Texas Budget: Let People Prosper Episode 65

In this Let People Prosper episode 65, let's discuss the legislative priorities set by the Texas House and Texas Senate in their recently proposed recommended budgets. While there's much to wade through, here’s what I’ve derived so far from the House and Senate recommended budgets. Of course, there will be many discussions over these budgets during the next several months until a final budget is determined and approved by both chambers, but these recommendations give a good indication of the priorities of each chamber, much like your family's budget. 

The first thing to note is that both chambers have prioritized public education and property tax relief to a certain extent. Both chambers have relatively large increases in public education, but the details will need to be worked out throughout the legislative session to determine the allocations to public education spending and tax relief.

In general, there should be a push for spending current resources more wisely within public education before considering any new money. In other words, there could be a large amount of money to buy down the school maintenance and operations property tax as outlined in TPPF's property tax plan (view how much you would save  over time with our online calculator). 

The House budget noted first in the table below shows that the recommendations for state funds and all funds (state and federal) are greater than the Conservative Texas Budget limits based on growth of 8% in population and inflation in the last two fiscal years. The amounts appropriated for 2018-19 budget are from the LBB's Fiscal Size-Up for an apples-to-apples appropriation comparison. I've also noted the Texas Comptroller's Biennial Revenue Estimate (BRE) amounts. The House budget allocates $9 billion towards pub ed/property tax relief but is contingent on bills passed for those. There aren’t specific allocations of that $9 billion for pub ed or property tax relief. 

The Senate budget is noted second and is below our CTB limit for state funds but is above our limit for all funds. The Senate budget provides $6 billion in pub ed/prop relief to the tune of $3.7 billion for increased teacher pay ($5,000) and $2.3 billion for prop relief. 

I've excluded $7.1 billion in federal funds from both chambers' 2020-21 budgets for disaster recovery after Harvey as these should be one-time, unexpected expenses. 

Overall, the Senate budget is in better shape to meet the CTB limits to keep the average taxpayer's ability to pay for government from unnecessarily growth and doesn't include use of the ESF like the House does of $633 million.

Bottom line: There’s work to do to limit government spending and provide tax relief to #letpeopleprosper.

More on this comparison here.