Texas' Budget Shortfall: $25 Billion

by: Phillip Martin

Mon Oct 25, 2010 at 07:21 AM CDT

$25 billion.

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.

The next legislative session is going to be an absolute disaster.

Read the full story at the Dallas Morning News: "Legislature likely to cut deep to meet possible $25 billion budget gap."