January 11, 2017      6:34 PM
Patrick expects revenue shortfalls to come out of health care and education, earning huge applause at TPPF
Patrick claims credit, along with Abbott, for keeping the Texas budget out of the red, omitting Straus: “There’s a difference between conservative leadership, and leadership that’s not so conservative.”
Lt. Gov. Dan
Patrick expects this session’s budget shortfalls – possibly up to $6
billion – to be covered by cuts to the spending plan’s two biggest drivers:
health care and education.
That’s not going to be a message that’s well received by
either set of stakeholders, but Patrick’s assessment won applause from the crowd
at the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Policy Orientation.
Patrick told the group gathered in downtown Austin that
education and health care – all told, 90 percent of the budget – are ripe for
cost containment rather than increases in revenue.
“We’re going to find ways in those two big areas of the
budget – which are billions and billions and billions and billions, like the
stars, of dollars -- to find areas that we can save money in and make sure we
focus on all the needs and necessities of our education system and our health
care system,” Patrick said. “So we’ll do it. We’ll do it.”
This is not simply the difference between entertaining
funding – or no funding – between the House and Senate. Nor is it forcing
state agencies to take a 4 percent cut to their budgets. No, Patrick expects
the Senate budget to be balanced by cuts to existing expenditures.
By Kimberly Reeves
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