Enjoy a Friday LinkSwarm:
Posts Tagged ‘Budget’
LinkSwarm for December 7, 2012
Friday, December 7th, 2012Texas Vs. California: Thanksgiving Week Edition
Monday, November 19th, 2012Another quick update on the respective fates of our nation’s two biggest states:
Texas vs. California: Halloween 2012 Edition
Wednesday, October 31st, 2012Six days to the election, and I’ve spent most of the night handing out candy. Six days until we choose to follow the successful Texas Red State path of low taxes and limited government, or the failing Blue State California path of bankruptcy and bigger government.
Texas Vs. California: 13 Days Before the Election Roundup
Wednesday, October 24th, 2012With the election less than two weeks away, time for a roundup of how the champions of their respective political models (Texas for Red States and California for Blue States) are doing:
The total personal income (TPI) in Texas reached $1.07 trillion dollars in the second quarter of this year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. That’s an increase of 71 percent from the state’s corresponding total 10 years earlier, $626.7 billion.
Here’s another way of looking at it: Texas accounted for 8.02 percent of the nation’s TPI this year, up 1.10 percentage points from 6.92 percent in 2002.
That’s nearly five times larger than the runner-up, Florida, which increased its share of national TPI by 0.23 points in a decade. Just four other states registered gains better than a tenth of a point.
(Hat tips for many Texas items: WILLisms’ Twitter feed.)
Rick Perry Gets a C from the Cato Institute
Thursday, October 11th, 2012Texas has benefited greatly from having a better economy than the nation as a whole, and Rick Perry made the low-tax, small government model Texas uses the centerpiece of his abortive run for President.
However, the Libertarian Cato Institute seems considerably less impressed with Perry’s job as Governor, as they gave him a C on their Fiscal Policy Report Card. Indeed, his numerical score of 51 is only two points above California’s spendthrift Jerry Brown (!!!) with a D at 49, and lower than the Republican average of 57.
Here’s their knock on Perry:
Governor Perry has a conservative reputation, but he hasn’t cut state taxes substantially or reduced the size of Texas government. Indeed, Perry has presided over steady increases in spending. Between the 2000–2001 biennium when Perry assumed office and the 2012–2013 biennium, state general fund spending rose at an annual average rate of 3.2 percent, and total state spending rose at an annual average rate of 4.6 percent.
His record on taxes is mixed. In 2003 he signed into law a package of tax and fee increases.In 2006 he approved a business tax overhaul that replaced the corporate franchise tax with a modified gross receipts tax called the “Texas Margin Tax.” The new tax hit 180,000 additional businesses and increased state-level taxes by more than $1 billion annually.
The added state revenues were used to reduce local property taxes, but the overall effect of the package has been to centralize government power in the state and reduce beneficial tax competition between local jurisdictions. Nonetheless, Perry has supported increases in small business exemptions for the Margin Tax. And in 2011 he vetoed a bill to tax online purchases. In 2012 he proposed a five-point Texas Budget Compact, which includes transparency in budgeting, a constitutional limit on spending growth, opposition to new taxes, a strong rainy day fund, and the cutting unnecessary government programs.
One reason Perry may not rank better is the report is based on data covering January 2010 to August 2012, so presumably Perry’s work as Governor in the preceding decade isn’t covered (despite it’s prominent mention in the section quoted above). Another is that several higher ranked governors scored well for things like cutting individual income tax rates, while Texas has no state income tax. I also wonder how well they factor in population growth.
While I don’t want to reject Cato’s ranking out of hand, the opaqueness of their rating system (which must necessarily involve a substantial subjective component) makes me very wary of taking it at face value. You would think that Brown would rank much lower, especially with his state’s municipal bankruptcies, tax hikes and the train to nowhere. Though I do think Perry still has considerable room for improvement, I have to take Cato’s ranking of him with several grains of salt.
And if you’re looking for a more readable version of the report, click here.
Dear California: You Know That Money Will Be Wasted, and You Know Those Tax Hikes Will Be Permanent
Friday, September 28th, 2012I’ve got another Texas vs. California piece coming around on the guitar, but I thought there was
Hold on to your hats, but it seems that California voters might, just might, be catching on that the Democrats who run California’s state government are wasting their money.
I will now wait for the indignant shouts of incredulous outrage to die down.
Support for Gov. Jerry Brown’s plan for billions of dollars in tax hikes on the November ballot is slipping amid public anxiety about how politicians spend money, but voters still favor the proposal, according to a new USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times poll.
Well, I did say “might.”
The findings suggest that voters are leery of sending more cash to Sacramento in the wake of a financial scandal at the parks department, spiraling costs for a multibillion-dollar high-speed rail project to connect Northern and Southern California and ill-timed legislative pay raises.
If voters aren’t willing to stop spending for a $100 billion train to nowhere that everyone know will never be completed, and which would lose even more money every year if it was, when will they?
Brown’s measure would temporarily raise income tax rates on high earners for seven years and boost the state sales tax by a quarter-cent for four years in a bid to avoid steep cuts in funds for schools and other programs.
Note that word: “temporary.”
Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the way politics actually works knows that there’s no such thing as a “temporary” tax hike. The only thing that prevents Democrats (and establishment Republicans) from spending every cent of every tax collected and more is booting them out of office. Raising taxes simply ensures that they’ll spend all the new revenue and additional money they don’t have on top of that. And with the fiscal tsunami California is facing from bloated government, spiraling debt, and gold-plated public employee union pensions that will bankrupt the state, those “temporary” taxes will never be repealed. Ever.
And two or four years down the line, the next Democratic governor will be asking the voters to approve another “temporary” tax hike…
Texas vs. California: First Day of Fall Edition
Friday, September 21st, 2012Time for another Texas vs. California round-up of how the Lone Star State is kicking the not-so-Golden State’s ass in just about every measure except signing NBA free-agents.
Billionaire Wants Ft. Worth Taxpayers to Pay For His Hobbies
Wednesday, September 12th, 2012Ft. Worth has a $49 million budget deficit. So they’re doing the responsible thing that Texas governments do when faced with budget shortfalls: Cutting back on spending. (Maybe someone should tell California (or Europe) about this radical approach, since no one there seems to be able to cut a budget except at the edge of bankruptcy. And frequently not even then.)
The City of Fort Worth is looking to cut the arts program by 25% which would bring the Arts Council budget to just over $537,000.
Businessman Robert Bass and his wife have are against the budget cuts and argued for funding to be restored before the city council.
Robert Bass is a multi-billionaire. He could pay the amount cut out of his own pocket and it would literally be less than how much his personal wealth fluctuates on the ups and downs of the stock market on any given day. But instead of ponying up, Bass believes that Ft. Worth taxpayers should foot the bill.
You might think that a Texas oil billionaire would be a big Republican contributor. You’d be wrong. Beneficiaries of his contributions in this cycle have been Democrats like Dianne Feinstein, Ben Nelson, and Claire McCaskill. (And his wife Anne was equally generous to Democrats.)
Government exists to carry out those tasks that cannot be carried out by non-governmental organizations (defense, courts, etc.). Government should let individuals voluntarily fund the arts out of their own pockets rather than forcing taxpayers to pick up the bill. If Robert Bass wants art organizations in Ft. Worth to be funded, all he has to do is write a check, not demand taxpayers pay for his hobbies.
LinkSwarm for September 7, 2012
Friday, September 7th, 2012Still trying to get back in the swing of things, so here’s a LinkSwarm for a lazy Friday:
Across the paper’s many departments, though, so many share a kind of political and cultural progressivism — for lack of a better term — that this worldview virtually bleeds through the fabric of The Times.
As a result, developments like the Occupy movement and gay marriage seem almost to erupt in The Times, overloved and undermanaged, more like causes than news subjects.
Californians Can’t Even Stop Spending When They’re Actually in Bankruptcy
Wednesday, September 5th, 2012The City Council of San Bernardino, California failed to pass budget cuts at their meeting Tuesday, despite the city already being in bankruptcy.
After a meeting that lasted more than nine hours and stretched past midnight, the San Bernardino City Council failed to pass a plan for drastic budget reductions, an initial step in the city’s bankruptcy proceedings.
The proposed “pre-pendency plan” included $22.4 million in cuts, achieved by measures including slashing more than 100 jobs and closing three of the four city libraries. It would not cover the entire $45.8-million budget shortfall, but city staff called the plan a necessary first step.
Proposed cuts to the Fire Department became an irreconcilable sticking point. Twenty positions in the department were slated to be eliminated without layoffs, and the plan included an option of rotating closures at fire stations.
Instead of voting on the budget plan as a whole, Councilman Chas Kelley made a proposal to vote on an alternate plan for the Fire Department that was backed by the firefighters union, and to direct staff to seek bids on a proposal to contract out some of the city’s trash services.
The vote, taken after midnight, passed 4 to 3 but was promptly vetoed by Mayor Pat Morris, who had called that plan “irresponsible” and an “almost slavish adoption of a union proposal without any analysis.”
Maybe they can delay things long enough that repo men are actually carting furniture out of the council chambers before they vote…
(Hat tip: Dwight.)