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The Disease Is Big Government
My friends, Texas must learn from the mistakes of states like California, who has for years increased its public debt and spent all the money that flows into the state treasury. These are the practices that have gotten them on the brink of bankruptcy. I am deeply concerned that if Texas continues to increase its public debt and continues to spend all the money in the Treasury it will not be long before we find ourselves in the same dilemma as California.
Some of you may not know this but in the last three years the Texas Legislature has passed over 3,000 new laws in Texas. Frankly, I thought our Legislators were supposed to represent us and protect from too much government intervention into our lives. From the looks of things that doesn't seem to be the case.
I wish to offer the Legislature a simple idea. Instead of passing a thousand new laws the next time the Legislature meets why don't they eliminate a few hundred of them? I would vote for that in a heartbeat. In addition, over the past three legislative sessions the Legislature has managed to approve an increase in fees and government regulations. What was the net result of all this change in government? The truth is we the people are now burden with having to pay more for everything we buy such as food, gas, and typical household items. This makes it very difficult for Texas families who are trying to get ahead.
How much bigger is government today than 20 years ago? How about a lot bigger! Just took around and it will not take you long to see that every conceivable kind of job in our economy requires some kind of government license, permit, or certification. From serving food at a restaurant, or fixing a water leak in our homes government now has found a way to tax just about everything that moves.
Let me be clear, we're not going to have real prosperity in the long run until we stop fighting the symptoms and start fighting the disease. The disease is Big Government. There's only one cure for this and that is a zero based budget and a Constitutional provision to limit the growth of state spending to population growth plus inflation, the growth in personal income, or the growth in gross state product, whichever is less.
It would seem logical that in a conservative state like Texas our legislators would have tackled this type of budget issue a long time ago. The fact is that the Legislature have not even been able to get this kind of legislation passed out of the respective committee much less taken a vote on either of these bills on the Senate or House floor.
If you ask the career politicians why we don't take bold steps to reign in the size government many of them will say that it is too hard and time consuming for legislators and budget administrators to do use zero base budgeting and that 85% or so of the spending in the budget is fixed by laws passed by the Texas Legislature. Well, I have a simple answer to these problems. Laws passed by the Legislature can be repealed by the Legislature and that includes the creation of state agencies, burdensome regulations and fees that interfere with a free market. And, if the Legislature is unwilling to do this, then isn't it time we elect a Legislature that will?
Here is another problem I see in Austin. Earlier this year Governor Perry asked the Legislature to include in the new budget a $1.6 billion tax cut as part of the new budget. Well, my question then is, "If there is room for a $1.6 billion tax cut, what was it doing there in the first place?
As your next State Comptroller I will, during my first year in office, present my ideas on how we can effectively, without harming the people of Texas, reduce the size of government, eliminate the Margins Tax, and eliminate burdensome and costly regulations that harm Texas businesses.
Unfortunately, career politicians and Austin bureaucrats don't feel the same pain from high taxes and fees that you and I do. As a matter of fact, government makes a profit on every dollar of sales tax, property tax, or excise tax that is collected every day and it seems from the way they conducted this pass legislative session they are set on collecting even more taxes in coming years. That is not the role of government. The role of government is to protect the public from harm and remove barriers to interfere with our ability to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
Last week I reminded you of the words of legendary football coach Vince Lombardi who said, "Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection, we can catch excellence." This is what you and I must do if we are to make Texas great.
As you can see the disease of big government harms Texas families and our entire economic future. As long as big government is in existence it prevents us from one day "catching excellence."
That's all for now. Next week I will present another segment of my conversation with Texas. To learn more about the campaign visit http://electraultorres.com or http://www.texastomorrow.org.
I just thought you should know.
For Texas and Freedom,
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