There are no new ideas, but there are plenty of bad ideas

There’s so much wrong with what Greg Abbott wants for Texas that it’s hard to know where to begin.

BagOfMoney

In his first major policy address as a gubernatorial candidate, Attorney General Greg Abbott proposed tighter constitutional limits on state spending and increased constraints on the multibillion-dollar Rainy Day Fund.

Abbott laid out his “Working Texans” plan, which is based on fiscal reform to reduce the scope of government, during a campaign stop Monday in Brownsville.

Abbott said that if he were elected governor, he would propose two constitutional amendments to keep state spending tied to population growth and inflation and to safeguard the Rainy Day Fund, the state’s savings account, from “being raided” by the Legislature.

Additionally, Abbott said the governor should be given “expanded line-item veto authority” to reduce excessive spending. He will face former Texas Workforce Commission Chairman Tom Pauken in the 2014 Republican primary.

“I am willing to take on the task of making difficult decisions to reduce government spending when at times the Legislature may not be able to do so,” Abbott said, according to prepared remarks, adding that the state has seen “a troubling trend” of using the Rainy Day Fund to cover “what should be core government operations and expenses. “

Instead, Abbott wants to limit the excessive spending of the fund by only allowing it to be used to meet unforeseen revenue shortfalls, to reduce existing debt, to pay for state disaster relief and to address one-time infrastructure payments.

[…]

In his proposal, Abbott also emphasized the importance of finding a permanent source for additional transportation infrastructure, including a proposal to constitutionally divert a portion of the motor vehicle sales tax to road construction and maintenance.

“We need to stop diverting transportation funding away from building roads,” Abbott said. “Money raised for roads should be spent on roads.”

Texas Politics has this in bullet point form. Let me open with what Burka has to say:

Abbott’s ideas will have the effect of constricting the state’s economy rather than expanding it. He says next-to-nothing about public education, for example, nor does he address health care; in other words, he ignores the two biggest and costliest areas of state services. The only solace one can take in Abbott’s vision for the future of the state is that it resolves the question of whether he would be better or worse than Rick Perry. Astonishing as it may seem, I think he is worse than Perry.

The question must be asked: Is Abbott’s vision what Texans want for their government — or their families? Is this really a state whose leaders have no interest in improving the lives of its citizens? Is Texas really going the way of Arkansas and other backward states where all that matters is guns?

Well, there’s also hating on gays and “illegal immigrants”, plus suing the federal government, but you get the idea. I guess it hasn’t occurred to Abbott that the reason we’re dipping into the Rainy Day Fund for a water infrastructure bank is because we have a vast unmet need for water infrastructure projects and no other politically acceptable way to pay for them. He’s also probably not noticed the gaping hole in Texas’ transportation funding, and the fierce resistance to any way of paying for some of it. Oh, and there’s also the judgment against the school finance system – the suit is being relitigated, but I don’t expect a substantially different outcome – and the millions of uninsured Texans that he and his cronies try not to acknowledge. Clearly what we need is a rigid and restrictive spending cap, because that will solve all these problems with the magic of the free market, or something like that.

The Observer shows the degree of Abbott’s ignorance on the subject.

The idea of tying spending to inflation and population growth is not a new one. It’s been popular among elements of the right for years. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, uber-activist Michael Quinn Sullivan and even Perry have flogged the proposal for years. But it’s never gone anywhere for two main reasons—one, there is little appetite in the Texas Legislature for tying their own hands; two, it’s a bad idea.

Texas is already a (relatively) low tax, minimal services, small government state. Indeed, as Nate Blakeslee pointed out in a January Texas Monthly profile of Sullivan, state spending as a share of both the state’s gross domestic product and personal income has been trending downward for two decades. For personal income, which is what the Comptroller uses to set a spending limit, the share of spending has decreased from around 5.2 percent in the early ’90s to just over 4 percent today. Even using the population-plus-inflation spending limit, Texas’ budget has stayed under that limit for the last decade, according to an analysis by the Legislative Budget Board.

In other words, there’s just not a spending problem in Texas. Which is not the same thing as saying there’s an inequity problem when it comes to how revenues are collected (not having a state income tax, for example, means the poor and middle class take it on the nose with regressive sales and property taxes).

Still, tying the state’s budget to inflation and population growth could further constrain state government. You could pretty much forget about ever investing more in public schools, higher education or infrastructure, at least during non-flush times.

In April, the Legislative Budget Board crunched the numbers. The growth in personal income used to set the spending cap for 2014-2015 was 10.71 percent. In other words, the state could spend almost 11 percent more than it had the previous biennium. Using population growth plus inflation instead would limit spending growth to 6.82 percent. That would mean $2.7 billion less for state leaders to work with. That’s not a huge number given that the 2014-2015 state budget includes $95 billion in general revenue. But lowering the spending limit now would have a compounding effect over time.

That’s probably the point—force future generations to subscribe to the current model of low-ish taxes and minimal services. Abbott more or less admitted as much during a press confab after his Brownsville speech.

“By imposing these standards by constitutional provision it means that for generations there will be limits in the growth of spending in this state,” he said, according to the Associated Press.

However, the Legislature has shown little appetite for any of the proposals Abbott is touting. A bill tying the spending limit to population-plus-inflation is filed every session… and goes nowhere.

The Lone Star Project points out that much of what Abbott is proposing is constitutionally redundant as well. The good news is that by going the constitutional amendment route, Abbott starts from a position of not having enough votes for his ideas, and being unlikely to get any more support for them. But the best way to prevent bad ideas from gaining a foothold is to beat them back at the ballot box.

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