AUSTIN, Texas -- Ooops. A $610 million deficit in Texas' famously balanced
budget just happened to G.W. Bush on his way to the White House.
Of all the things you know you shouldn't say in this world, is there any
sweeter satisfaction than, "Told you so"? I'm also telling you this deficit
is going to get a lot bigger.
As a Republican legislator remarked sourly several months ago, "I actually
hope Bush loses just so he'll he have to be here to face the mess he's
made."
Many and complicated are the ways of the Texas budget, and according to the
state comptroller, we should get a $1 billion surplus out of state taxes, so
the shortfall is covered for now. If the economy remains strong. If the
desperately poor in our "soft-landing, slowing economy" so shrewdly planned
by Fed chief Alan Greenspan don't decide to apply for the social services
that they are entitled to.
The dirty little secret of Texas government is that the way we keep it
solvent is by shorting the poor. We go to great pains NOT to let people who
are qualified for Medicaid know they are qualified, and then we make it
incredibly difficult for them to apply.
As our Health Commissioner Reyn Archer, in one of his moments of disastrous
frankness, told The New York Times anent the 600,000 poor children in this
state who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled: "The problem is that
the legislature knows if we are successful and we get all those kids
enrolled they would not balance their budgets. It's not one person saying,
'Don't do this,' not one agency saying, 'Don't do this.' It's sort of, 'Why
would we all rock the boat at this point?'"
Just the other day, a study by the Food Research and Action Center ranked
Texas 44th in the country in percentage of eligible children participating
in the federal summer lunch program. We have 1.5 million poor kids eligible
for the program, and 142,374 were participating as of July.
Yup, that's the way we do it in Texas: The motto of our social services is
"Don't ask, don't tell." We don't even tell when it's federal money paying
for the deal.
But you notice that this deficit has appeared at a time when we are not
only still keeping eligibility a deep, dark secret -- we are in mid-boom.
This is not a hopeful sign.
It has been an open secret in Austin for several months that one state
agency after another was going into the red. So everyone who told Dubya not
to insist on the $1.7 billion tax cut can now stand up and take a bow.
Special thanks to House Speaker Pete Laney, who himself insisted on using
some of the last budget surplus to pay off bond issues, so we aren't even
deeper in debt.
An equal act of folly was to leave almost nothing (by state budget
standards) in the Rainy Day Fund. Since you can count on unexpected
contingencies to upset the budget, there's supposed to be enough in there to
cover them, but there's not. This is the kind of thing that drives budget
planners batty.
And although it's very nice that we are expecting a $1 billion surplus, the
fact is that it will be gobbled up by increasing expenses so fast that you
bettern not blink or you'll miss it. The state has more people moving in
every day, not to mention our native offspring; we have to build schools for
them all, provide roads for them to drive on, find places in the prisons for
the malefactors, find places in the universities and so forth.
And to top it all off, after the bean-boggling prison-building boom of the
early '90s, we are now told that we need more prisons. The only reason we
need more prisons is because of our insane drug laws and because Bush has
shut down the parole system, but that's another story.
(You'll be happy to know that those who cover the parole board finally have
a theory about how it works: Its actions are so inscrutable,
incomprehensible and apparently random that we now think they just refuse
parole to anyone whose middle name is Wayne or Lee, and that happens to be
everybody in prison.)
Another thing that's no secret here in Low-Tax Low-Serviceville is that
even given the minimal services we provide, the state is stretched to the
breaking point. It gets harder and harder to find people who will work for
state salaries. There's been a concentration of high salaries at the top,
with a consequent doubling-up of jobs at the lower echelons. This is not a
pretty sight.
So we can all look forward to the first session of the new millennium.
Budget hell again. Thanks, governor.
Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out
more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers
and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.
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