Rick Perry's Cover-Up and Corruption: Texas' $25 Billion Budget Shortfall

by: Phillip Martin, Progress Texas

Sun Oct 31, 2010 at 08:15 PM CDT

Ed. Note: This is the tenth and final part of a ten-part wrap-up of Rick Perry's history of cover-up and corruption that will run on Burnt Orange Report today.

There has not been a bigger or more important cover-up this election cycle, and perhaps for decades in Texas, than Rick Perry's refusal to come to grips and be honest about the $25 billion budget shortfall facing the state of Texas. Our state's budget crisis is going to devastate the future of our economy for years, if not longer, unless Texans do something about it immediately.

For months, Rick Perry has done his best to cover-up the state’s $25 billion budget shortfall, which is now “proportionately larger” than California’s. From the Dallas Morning News, "Legislature likely to cut deep to meet possible $25 billion budget gap."

Texas faces a budget crisis of truly daunting proportions, with lawmakers likely to cut sacrosanct programs such as education for the first time in memory and to lay off hundreds if not thousands of state workers and public university employees.

Texas' GOP leaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem's size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That's about 25 percent of current spending.

The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.

In recent months, Perry has been wildly erratic about the amount of the budget shortfall, at times saying it is nothing to worry about and only $10 billion large, and other times suggesting it is a major financial crisis that could be $21 billion large. When Bill White and Texas lawmakers requested the Comptroller to provide updated revenue estimates, Perry insisted on covering-up the budget projections and called the simple request for taxpayer transparency “bizarre.”

Perry has been quick to blame Washington and the national economic environment for the state’s budget shortfall. The Austin American-Statesman, however, has pointed out repeatedly that such a claim is highly disingenuous, in a column, "Budget mess got going with 2006 property tax cuts":

The economic downturn isn't helping the shortfall, but it's not driving it, either. The driving factor is a decision by Gov. Rick Perry and the Legislature in 2006 to reduce property taxes by $14 billion every two years and raise only about $9 billion to replace that money. In other words, the Legislature committed $5 billion every two years to holding down property taxes instead of spending that money on education, public safety or other priorities. Then the state's new business tax brought in drastically less than projected, and that $5 billion gap turned into a nearly $9 billion gap.

Additional Sources - Austin American-Statesman

• Austin American-Statesman - Lawmakers seek answers on Texas' budget outlook
• Austin American-Statesman - Budget mess got going with 2006 property tax cuts
• Austin American-Statesman - Legislative leaders eye spending cuts to deal with looming budget hole
• Austin American-Statesman - Low tax collections make budget shortfall worse
• Austin American-Statesman - Perry campaigns on job creation as state revenue shrinks
  

• Dallas Morning News - Legislature likely to cut deep to meet possible $25 billion budget gap
• San Antonio Express-News - Perry disputes budget shortfall prediction of $21 billion
• Wall Street Journal - Big Texas Deficit Puts Governor in Tight Spot
• Dallas Morning News - Agency budget cuts small in face of Texas' gaping shortfall
  
• Burnt Orange Report - Rick Perry's "Bizarre" Budget Claims: Voters Stuck With Bad Case of Deja Vu
• Burnt Orange Report - Debra Medina on Rick Perry's $18 Billion Budget Deficit