The Texas Tribune has an Interactive budget tool on their site that's fairly sobering. While I'm a big proponent of primarily using cuts to make Texas' biennial budget match available revenue projections, the tool does a pretty good job illustrating just how difficult those cuts will be.
That said, I'm also of a belief that funding cuts, for health care and education, shouldn't be permanent fixes. Instead they should be temporary patches while efficiencies are found that are sustainable long-term.
If you have a budget that won't survive lean times, then you really don't have a budget at all.
News-ish agencies and progressive Democrats don't really get that. Neither do some Republicans. The key is to make painful cuts now, while working to build something sustainable going forward. The second part of the conversation is notably missing from Texas Politics.
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