ACTION ALERT: Stop Texas' 26% Spending Increase

The disastrous 83rd Legislature comes down to this, from the Tea Party Advisory Caucus:

Fellow Patriots:

THIS IS AS URGENT AS IT GETS.

PLEASE SPREAD JOANN'S MESSAGE FAR AND WIDE AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

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Spending Up 26%! Texas Legislature Takes Wild Left Turn & Spends like there’s No Tomorrow

Alert from: JoAnn Fleming, Chairman, TX Legislature's TEA Party Caucus Advisory Committee; Executive Director, Grassroots America

The news is bad – very bad. A majority in the Texas House and Senate (yes, a majority of Republicans) have gone on a wild spending spree! We have one last chance to stop it. Please help us kill HB 1025 and SB 1 to force a special session. We believe we can get a more conservative budget when all the focus is on spending.

It is time for YOU to come to the aid of Texas! Call, e-mail, text, FaceBook, and Tweet your state representative as soon as possible! Melt the phone lines starting at 8 AM Friday and call all day! Call your representative’s district offices and Capitol office. Tell him/her you do not support the budget and you support a special session to get it right. Ask them to vote down HB 1025 & SB 1.  Be firm and employ the Golden Rule.  Yelling and cursing doesn't make them hear you, in fact, it can have the opposite effect.

To find your state representative click here.

For good measure, call your state senator & declare you don’t support the budget, click here.

Call Governor Perry’s office & ask him to veto the budget if it passes!(512) 463-2000

Special thanks to Texas Public Policy Foundation for its help in putting together the numbers that follow...

The bad news - if HB 1025 (supplemental spending bill) and SB 1 (budget) pass, this happens:

·        The $1.8 billion in tax relief called for by the Governor is slashed because a majority of the legislature went on a spending spree. The Legislature includes about half of the Governor’s request (about $900 million) and wants to count $631 million in a one-time electrical ratepayer fee rebate for about 80% of Texans as a tax cut—which it isn’t.

·        The budget will exceed the state’s constitutional spending limit. They will bust the spending cap! The big spenders seek to circumvent the spending limit through SJR 1, the constitutional amendment to be approved by voters in November. They are changing the definition of “busting the cap” so they can say they didn’t…sounds just like Washington, DC!

·        Though they had more than $13 billion in new general revenue (GR) on hand for the 2014-15 budget, House & Senate budget appropriators did not include money in the budget for “pay as you go” highway funding or provide taxpayers with a meaningful tax cut. Instead, they spent it all and want to raid the Rainy Day Fund too!

·        The Legislature has decided to raid the state’s Economic Stabilization Fund (Rainy Day Fund) for almost $4 billion. The ESF was intended to protect against the pressure for a tax increase during an economic downturn. Instead, this budget uses the Rainy Day Fund to explode spending during a time of plenty, cutting the fund balance in half—from $8 billion to $4 billion. This leaves Texas vulnerable if the national economy continues to falter or we have a natural or manmade disaster.

·        The Legislature will appropriate approximately $106 billion in General Revenue and Rainy Day funds. This is an increase of $22 billion, or 26%, over last session! (This is a session to session, not a budget to budget, comparison.)

·        The total of all funds (including federal funds) in the new budget looks to be about $214 billion, an increase of about $38 billion, or 21%, over what was appropriated in 2011. (This is a session to session, not a budget to budget, comparison.)

·        This level of spending is proof most legislators are tone deaf (94% of 2012 Republican primary voters signaled they wanted spending cut). They willingly ignore the unstable national and global economies. This is a threat to a strong Texas and should be treated as an assault on liberty.

·        This spending repeats the mistake of the 79^th TX Legislature (2005). After the 78^th Legislature (2003) held the line on spending, the 79^thLegislature went on a spending spree that led to the 2011 $15 billion budget shortfall. It could happen again. Are the big spenders setting the stage for gambling and/or and income tax next session?

·        This spending rejects principles of fiscal conservatism in exchange for a big-gov’t approach like those of the other big-five states: CA, NY, IL, FL.

·       This budget is a threat to the economic prosperity of Texas citizens, families, and communities. It is a threat to Texas – the best hope for enduring freedom in these United States. 

 The Legislature appears determined to spend the State of Texas into becoming the next California, and the Governor is sucking his thumb.  The situation is dire.  Call and Tweet your legislators AND the Governor.

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Contact Info:

Governor Rick Perry:
Phone: (512) 463-2000
Twitter: @GovernorPerry

Lt. Governor David Dewhurst:
Phone: (512) 463-0001
Twitter: @DavidHDewhurst

House Speaker Joe Straus
Phone: (512) 463-1000
Twitter: @SpeakerStraus

Find your own legislator here.

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Update: Continuing the pattern of this bizarre session, Lt. Governor Dewhurst NAILS it!!!

Update II: Empower Texans has more here; money quote: 

There is $13 billion of additional general revenue sitting in the state treasury than two years prior. But that wasn’t enough to satisfy the Legislature’s appetite for more spending. They say they need $4 billion more from a fund constitutionally created to backfill budget shortfalls.

There are many aspects of the current version of the budget that should be of serious concern to voters (like throwing $4 billion extra into public education to appease Democrats, the lack of substantial tax relief, a pension increase for legislators… etc.). Arguably the biggest though is the reckless disregard for the original purpose of the Rainy Day Fund.

Legislators should hit the reset button and pass a better budget in a special session. Getting it right is far more important than just getting it done.

 Update III: Chuck DeVore Tweets this diagram:

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California's Conservative Migration to Texas

 
One common refrain we hear is that the migration of Californians to Texas is a bad thing because TexansDon'tWantCalifornia'sLibreals(TM).  We've never found that argument compelling, especially since the 2010 election results made clear that the liberals in California have stayed put.  When Glenn Beck, Chuck DeVore, and myself have all moved to the same state in the past five years, it seems to indicate a trend.

Yesterday, we spoke to Chuck DeVore who pointed us to this poll:

 With its economic troubles, California has been losing people in droves. The plurality of those migrants have moved to Texas, as many as 70,000 in 2011 and 60,000 in 2012. Given this influx of new residents, we are fortunate to have at times asked our respondents whether they have moved to Texas from California, and though the actual number of these people is but a small subsample of our surveys, we have enough respondents to make two broad conclusions. First, these newcomers, on average, tend to be conservative. Pooling data from the May 2012 and February 2013 UT/Tribune surveys, we found that 57 percent of these California transplants consider themselves to be conservative, while only 27 percent consider themselves to be liberal (a fair guess as to the margin of error is somewhere around +/- 7 percentage points). Second, these new Texans aren’t rushing to find homes in the state’s urban centers: 55 percent are heading to the suburbs, the rest evenly dividing themselves between rural and urban locations.

Bottom Line: For economic refugees to Texas from California, conservatives outnumber liberals by more than two to one.  This is a good thing.  The Trib's wrap up says it well:

So while some may want to perceive the wave of Californians coming to Texas as part of the broader demographic trends that might eventually turn Texas purple, and then blue, the data collected to date suggest that Perry’s pitch appears to be hitting a chord with Californians who wear cowboy boots instead of Birkenstocks.

You can hear Governor Perry explain this phenomenon here.

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How to Kick the Left's Ass in Travis County

With the emergence of Battleground Texas, a lot of ink has been spilled about the left's efforts to flip Texas.  The threat is real, but we can beat it.  One key is to make the left play defense on territory it thinks it owns.

Cahnman's Musings has been a resident of Travis County for five and a half years.  We've always found the reports of it's liberalism, much like Mark Twain's demise, to be greatly exaggerated.  Before living in Travis County, we grew up in NYC and spend half a decade in and around Los Angeles.  Cahnman's Musings has seen places hopelessly up their ass with progressivism.  Travis county ain't it.

One thing we've always observed is that there are a lot of people in Travis County who are liberty minded in a general sense, but don't follow politics closely and don't vote.  Those folks are the key.  One example is the fraternities and sororities at U.T.  The Greek system is under assault from the permanent U.T. bureaucracy, and kids in the Greek system don't buy into progressivism in the same way other U.T. students do.  If you take 20 to 100 active members per house and multiply it by 20 houses, all of a sudden you're talking about meaningful vote totals.

And that's just one example.

In that spirit, Cahnman's Musings offers the following outline to put the left on defense in Travis County:

• Online Video -- This is an inexpensive way to push information.  Online video allows us to go around media gatekeepers.  The key is to use humor to capture attention.

• Identify, Register, and Turnout New Texans -- What do Glenn Beck, Chuck DeVore, and myself have in common?!?  We're all economic refugees from blue states, and we're all conservatives.  Economic refugees to Texas are a self-selected group.  The people moving to Texas aren't liberals.  As Governor Perry told Glenn Beck last week, "if they're takers who want government to take care of them from cradle to grave, they're going to stay in California."

• Follow the Money -- Big government inevitably begets boondoggles.  Nobody likes boondoggles.  On a related note, there could be a major scandal breaking in San Antonio.

• Make the Villains Household Names -- There are plenty of potential villains in Travis County.  In the spirit of Alinsky's thirteenth rule, Cahnman's Musings suggests raising these people's profile.  Personally, we'd start with this guy.

• Education -- We need to increase the economic literacy of average citizens.

Any effort to protect Texas from the left must include Travis County.  There are a lot of potential voters here.  In the short term, we can put the left on defense; over the longer haul, we can kick their ass.

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