The state spending cap is a stupid idea

And the Republicans want to make it worse.

Texas Senate leaders on Tuesday announced another round of efforts to change the way the state determines its two-year spending limit, and keep tax cuts from counting toward the constitutional cap on spending.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined state Sen. Kelly Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, at a Capitol press conference to announce legislation that would not allow the state’s budget to grow faster than population growth plus the rate of inflation.

State budget leaders in December pegged the state’s economic growth over the next two years at 11.68 percent, based on the projected rate of growth in Texans’ personal income. That means state spending cannot exceed $107 billion for the next biennium, leaving several billions of dollars in state coffers.

Hancock said basing economic growth projections on personal income is “a false measurement.”

“Individual income typically grows at a faster rate than the state’s economy,” he said.

Hancock’s Senate Bill 9 and Senate Joint Resolution 2, assigned low numbers as a sign of importance, would also exempt tax cuts from counting towards the spending limit. That would allow Republicans to provide billions of dollars in tax relief without having to vote to exceed the spending limit.

The proposed constitutional amendment changes the number of votes needed in both houses to exceed the spending limit from a simple majority to a three-fifths majority.

This is a companion to the earlier proposal to exempt spending on tax cuts and reducing debt from the spending cap. It’s not about spending or limiting spending so much as it is about limiting options, and it has nothing at all to do with fiscal responsibility, despite what some people want to believe. If the only things you can easily spend money on are tax cuts and reducing debt, what are you going to prioritize? The Observer points out some of the problems inherent in these ideas.

Hancock’s Senate Joint Resolution 2 and Senate Bill 9 would ask voters later this year to redefine the spending cap and tie it to state population growth, plus inflation, instead of growth in Texans’ personal income, which rises faster. It would broaden the spending cap to apply to all of the state’s spending, instead of just certain kinds.

That would bind the hands of future legislatures even tighter, while ensuring that more and more revenue would be untouchable beyond the cap. Legislators could still vote to bust the cap—though few seem to have the political courage to do that now—but Hancock would make that harder, too. Right now, the cap can be lifted by a simple majority of both houses. Hancock would make it a three-fifths vote.

If passed, Patrick’s two budget proposals don’t technically contradict—actually, they’d be weirdly toxic (or synergistic, depending on your perspective) in combination, since more and more money would end up on the wrong side of the spending cap, and that money could only be used for tax cuts and debt—but it’s still a weirdly incomprehensible mess from a policy perspective, and put together seemingly on the fly. It’s the art of government as outlined on the back of a Gadsden Flag cocktail napkin.

What’s worse—it’s straight out of Sacramento. You know how the recent recession calcified a Texas meme about the Golden State being the worst place on earth? California is doing pretty well lately, though you won’t hear about it in Austin. But one of the ways California got itself into a mess over the last few decades was by tying the hands of future legislatures and restricting the state’s ability to raise revenue, all the while kicking tough (and easy) decisions to voters. All three are becoming more and prominent parts of the Texas model—paradoxically, done in the name of targeting “California-style” spending.

You think the Lege engages in shenanigans and sleight of hand now to meet the constitutional mandate for a balanced budget? (And by the way, doesn’t that already serve as a spending cap?) Just wait till they’re foolish enough to put more obstacles in their own path. Whether they like it or not, ultimately stuff needs to be done. Why make it harder than it needs to be? It’s even more ludicrous hearing anyone talk about this as if it represented “discipline”. Last I checked, being disciplined meant having the restraint to not do unwise but tempting things. If you have to be handcuffed to a pole to ensure you don’t do them, you’re not disciplined.

But there’s another factor to consider as well. The budget is in surplus now, but the state has many documented needs. Roads, water, education, pension funds, and a laundry list of deferred maintenance that’s causing some of the people responsible for deferring it some poetically just problems, and so on. As someone who is old enough to remember the budget crunch of 2011 – which largely turned out to be the fault of a Comptroller who couldn’t do arithmetic – I heard the hoary old “household budget” metaphor dragged out to justify savage cuts so many times that if I’d received a nickel each time, I’d have a bigger surplus than the state does right now. Well, there’s a household budget metaphor for good times, too. When households are sitting on a pile of extra cash, they tend to the needs that they have build up over time. They fix things. They upgrade. They maintain. They invest in the care and wellbeing of their household, both the physical structure and the residents of it. Everyone recognizes such behavior as being responsible and necessary. Putting another artificial constraint on spending, especially now, is the opposite of that. It ensures that the problems we have now, both the ones we try to deal with and the ones we continue to ignore, will get worse and be more expensive to deal with later. How is this a good idea? Republicans are going to do what Republicans are going to do, but any Democrat who signs onto this needs to rethink their priorities. Eye on Williamson has more.

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