How Rick Perry Created His State's $27 Billion Budget Crisis

Republican presidential candidate Texas Gov. Rick Perry has created a budget crisis in Texas. (photo: Jim Young/Reuters)

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By Lou Dubose, The Washington Spectator

27 August 11

He Was Warned

"As of this moment, this legislation is a staggering $23 billion short of the funds needed to pay for the promised property tax cuts over the next five years.... These are conservative estimates."
- Texas Comptroller Carole Strayhorn, warning Gov. Rick Perry about his 2006 tax reform proposal

N HIS STATE OF THE STATE SPEECH in February, Rick Perry described the $27 billion budget shortfall confronting the Texas Legislature.

Now, the mainstream media and big government interest groups are doing their best to convince us that we're facing a budget Armageddon," Perry said. "Texans don't believe it and they shouldn't because it's not true."

The $27 billion equaled 15 percent of the $182 billion biennial budget the Legislature had passed two years earlier. If not Armageddon, an apocalyptic loss of revenue in a low-tax state that provides bare-bones public services.

Perry's statement was even more remarkable because most of the budget shortfall was a consequence of a business-tax bill he pushed through the Legislature in a special session five years earlier.

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