Is everything on the table or not?

Some things are more on the table than others.

Tax breaks that encouraged high-cost natural gas drilling in Texas cost state government $7.4 billion in lost revenue over six years and would cost the state billions more if continued, according to a study authored for legislative leaders.

The study by the Legislative Budget Board, which has not been publicly released, was created for Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, Speaker Joe Straus, Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden and House Appropriations Chairman Jim Pitts.

It lays out an argument for Texas lawmakers to reconsider the industry’s breaks on its production tax as one way to help close the state’s expected budget shortfall of $27 billion and highlights questions about how the tax breaks are applied. It made no recommendations.

State leaders are looking at bare-bones budget proposals that on average would cut overall spending by about 15 percent and scale back state services, including education, across the board. They are weighing balancing the budget either with cuts or new revenue or a combination.

“Everything is on the table,” Ogden, R-Bryan, said Wednesday about the study. But Dewhurst said he is not inclined to increase taxes on the industry and still hopes to balance the budget without higher taxes.

I don’t know if this particular tax break is good policy or not. The energy industry folks quoted in the story all think it’s super swell, in case you were wondering. But why should we take the merits of this particular piece of policy into account when we haven’t done so for all of the things that are about to be devastated by budget cuts? If we’re going to talk about firing or furloughing teachers, closing nursing homes, making abused children sleep at CPS offices because there’s no other place for them, and putting mentally ill people in jail because we don’t have anything else to do for them, we’d damn well better be willing to talk about whether or not a handful of energy companies get to keep a tax break, and a hell of a lot more than that besides. Otherwise, please spare me the baloney about “everything” being “on the table”.

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2 Responses to Is everything on the table or not?

  1. Ross says:

    I don’t like the claim that the breaks “cost” revenues. That implies, to me at least, that there is an implicit assumption that all revenues are the property of government, rather than the people and entities that add the value that create profits to tax. Without the breaks, the amount of activity would likely be at a far lower level. The definition of high cost ought to be reexamined, but don’t do away with the breaks entirely.

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