Here are some words I never thought I'd hear in Texas, at least while the current regime is in charge.

Texas regulatory agencies could get as much as $41.2 million more over the next two years to better do their jobs keeping an eye on everything from banks to investment advisers to doctors.

The spending is recommended by Senate budget writers, partly in response to the national economic crisis.

"A lot of the problems that are going on in our country now appear to have been related to lax regulation and lax enforcement," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Steve Ogden, R-Bryan. "And so one of the issues in here is to make sure that our regulatory agencies have the adequate resources so that they can go do their job, and hopefully, at least in Texas, we won't have as many problems because we had sufficient oversight and regulation going forward."

The money would be used for such things as more frequent inspection of investment advisers by the State Securities Board; salary increases for financial examiners to prevent federal agencies from luring them away; more people to handle complaint investigations involving doctors; and more people addressing fraud, complaints and solvency monitoring at the Texas Department of Insurance.

The cost would be covered mostly by fees paid by those who are regulated.