State Surpluses
Th AP via News8Austin: Dewhurst, Craddick authorize use of funds for critical needs
Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Tom Craddick authorized use of the state and federal funds. The largest chunk will go to nursing facility services.Dewhurst and Craddick co-chair the Legislative Budget Board. They've been criticized for delaying a decision on how to spend $463 million culled from vetoed legislation in the 2006-07 budget.
Copyright 2006 Associated Press, All rights reserved.
What to do with that money? Elsewhere in the article it says $250 million has been allocated "to help struggling nursing homes and other state programs," so we know they intend to spend it.
I hold that it was never properly their money to begin with and not even in the capacity of a "representative" who supposedly works for us in our name. Ideally, all the revenue collected from taxes, permits, licenses, and fees would be returned to those who paid them. Since that isn't likely to be feasible, something else has to be done.
Should the money be equally distributed among all Texas residents? This would be the simplest way to address the problem, even though the logistics would be an expensive headache. However, it ignores the glaring issue of justice in that those who paid more than the average would get screwed while those who paid less (or, in the case of children, barely anything) would get a handout. Using an rounded-up estimate of 23 million Texans, breaking up $463 million evenly would net everyone a $20.13 check...but it's immediately obvious this is far less than what a typical Texan might pay to the state over two years (legislative sessions occur in Texas ever other year), let alone just one. That's probably one to two months' of gas taxes alone, whereas business owners might have to deal with thousands of dollars in yearly licenses and permits to continue operating.
Should the money get plowed into tax/fee cuts? This would be a way to lessen everyone's burden as well as weaken the state's grip on future generations. However, it instantly becomes a heated political brawl over what and how much to cut. Politically connected privilege-peddlers would seize the opportunity to curry favors and favoritism. Even if partisans refrained from spitting at each other and sat down to objectively assess the situation, the vast network of interconnecting taxes and fees would be a daunting task. Tweaking them means incentives change and behavior along with them, leading to unintended consequences. And it does nothing to address the previous instances of state extortion that lead to the extra money in the first place.
It's a good thing those bills were vetoed and the money not spent. It's a bad thing it's still in the hands of those bastards and there's no easy way to return it to whom it belongs.