This testimony covers remarks today from James Quintero, that focus on three policy areas—property taxes, financial transparency, and local debt. He also offers some suggestions as to how each area might be improved via special purpose district reform.
By effectively limiting spending, we applaud the Senate for including $4 billion in tax cuts in their proposal. More money in the pockets of Texans is the best path to fueling job creation.
American public schools have seen a huge increase in inflation-adjusted expenditures over the past 60 years with little to show for it. School performance has less to do with dollars and much to do with teacher quality, system flexibility, parental involvement, and English proficiency.
In this edition of the Heartland Daily Podcast, Research Fellow Sean Parnell sits down with Texas Public Policy Foundation’s John Davidson. Davidson discusses his latest paper, “Medicaid Expansion by Another Name,” which describes the largely unsuccessful efforts of several Republican governors to get even modest reforms of Medicaid in exchange for expanding the program under Obamacare.
More and more municipalities are passing nanny state restrictions and regulations that infringe upon Texans’ personal freedoms, property rights, and livelihood.
In Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s first State of the State speech, he came out swinging with key budget recommendations for spending limit reform and tax relief that would help restrain the footprint of government.
With Texas’ extraordinary job creation leading the nation again in 2014, the success from the state’s low-tax, less-regulation and sensible-lawsuit approach provides a model that other states and D.C. would be wise to follow.
Most Texans recognize the need for immediate and lasting property tax relief. In fact, it’s so understood that high and fast-growing property taxes are a problem that lawmakers from both political parties are working to advance various tax relief bills in the statehouse. And yet despite the obvious need for reform, mayors from some of the largest cities in Texas gathered earlier this week to voice their opposition to statewide property tax relief efforts, proclaiming: “We know how to manage our budgets” and that “Texas cities are frugal…”
Across the country, state legislators have introduced over 200 measures aiming to prevent the enforcement of federal laws and regulations they believe to be unconstitutional. Here in Texas, 25 such measures have been filed.
While Texas is often held up as a paragon of economic freedom and opportunity, we still have our fair share of cumbersome regulations and laws restricting free enterprise. A good example of this can be found in the laws regulating the production and distribution of alcohol. Most recently craft beer brewers have been assaulted by...
Now don’t get me wrong — reducing debt is a good thing. But advocates of this approach never talk about the one idea that would allow the government to cut taxes, spend more on priorities, and reduce debt — cutting unnecessary spending.
We will likely spend about $62 billion in the upcoming biennium on a program that provides increasingly poor access to providers and substandard health outcomes to our neediest residents. Forcing more than a million able-bodied Texans into a strained program will only make it worse.