By KEN PAXTON
State Representative

On Wednesday of this week, the House Appropriations Committee adopted the House Budget (House Bill 1) and moved the bill to the floor of the Texas House of Representatives for debate during the coming week.

In total, the Appropriations Committee proposed a budget that reduces spending by 3.7 percent from general revenue and 9.7 percent in total from the budget that was adopted by the Legislature in May 2009 for the current biennium. Even with the proposed reductions in spending, the Legislature has still increased funding for K-12 public education by 50 percent from the 2004-2005 levels.

The House Appropriations Committee budget priorities, as reflected in HB 1, as a percentage of proposed total spending, are as follows:

1. Education, consisting of 44.4% of the budget;
2. Health and Human Services, consisting of 32.8 % of the budget;
3. Transportation and Highways, consisting of 9.9% of the budget; and
4. Public Safety and Prisons, consisting of 6.7% of the budget.

In addition, the House will take action on budget reductions for the current biennium, as ordered by Governor Perry, Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst and Speaker Straus in the spring of 2010. The reductions ordered in 2010 were largely cuts to administrative costs of the agencies, but some services were also scaled back as a result of the cuts.

The total budget from general revenue for the session must be constitutionally balanced at no more than $77.6 billion, according to the Comptroller’s Biennial Revenue Estimate issued in January, 2011. In addition, spending from general revenue is constitutionally limited at $78.0 billion for this budget cycle.

While the budget as adopted by the House Appropriations Committee is balanced and remains within our means, there are still budget cuts that can be made and funding priorities that need to examined further.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission estimates that Texas will need to spend an additional $4 billion on Medicaid per year beginning in the 2014-2015 budget to comply with federal law as a result of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act by Congress one year ago this week. Any cost efficiencies found and cuts made this year will give the Legislature additional flexibility in our budget in the future.

The Texas budget process is far from complete as there are numerous pieces of legislation that can further reduce bureaucratic costs, remove duplicative state agency functions, provide our school districts and local governments additional budget flexibilities, and reduce the level and role of government even further. These pieces of legislation coupled with a budget that prioritizes necessary government functions while eliminating unnecessary government functions will continue to keep Texas on the forefront of the national economy.