Reform Texas Medicaid to help the poor
Comparing HHSC’s cost estimates under the status quo to our reform model, cost-savings could be at least $4 billion dollars per year, increasing to as much as $6 billion per year by 2023.
Comparing HHSC’s cost estimates under the status quo to our reform model, cost-savings could be at least $4 billion dollars per year, increasing to as much as $6 billion per year by 2023.
In general, healthcare spending under Medicaid is rising at an unsustainable pace. Unless other budget priorities are forfeited, taxpayers may soon have to pay higher taxes.
Thanks to these exports, dominated by oil-related products, they supported more than 1.1 million Texas jobs in 2014, which are about 10 percent of all U.S. export-related jobs.
Despite these economic concerns and the difficulty of estimating economic and fiscal measures for two years in the future, the Comptroller’s certification provides evidence that the Legislature can fund essential government functions within population growth plus inflation and provide substantial tax relief.
Legislators should avoid the temptation to spend every taxpayer dollar available by passing conservative budgets while keeping taxes low, as they did this past session, so that the Texas model can continue to foster economic opportunity for all. If they do this, there’s no doubt Texas will keep its high credit ratings.
Texans have had to pay higher gasoline prices and incur much damage from this antiquated 40-year ban that should end immediately, which a bill in Congress would do but looks dead on arrival at the White House.
Open access to government is a key to accountable representation. The International Budget Partnership (IBP) recently released a report ranking the U.S. fifth best in effective governance and transparency. In another report by the U.S. PIRG Education Fund and Frontier Group, Texas ranks 13th in budget transparency. Despite these high marks, there is clearly more work both could do to provide real-time, online access to budget documents.
The U.S. became the world's largest producer of petroleum and related liquid fuels in 2013, whereby U.S. oil production has been three-fourths of increased global oil production and has reduced the nation's oil imports by 60 percent since 2007.
At the request of the Comptroller, the Legislature was able to eliminate these taxes to eliminate unnecessary burdens for a total monetary value of $18.3 million. This helps reduce the burden on Texas taxpayers and businesses and leaves more money in the productive private sector.
Limiting the global oil supply by prohibiting sale of domestically produced oil keeps global oil prices artificially high.
In Texas, wind’s performance at times of peak demand has a capacity factor of only 8.6 percent.
Let’s cut to the chase: “green” energy projects funded by the government with taxpayer dollars are doomed to fail and must end.