Volunteers for Texas?

Official state budget estimates project a $5 billion shortfall for the next biennium -- although with sales tax revenues teetering and other factors, some believe Texas may be closer to $8 billion in the hole when the Lege gets down to business next year. Essential programs like health care and education are already shortchanged, and the politically popular notion that we can just "do without" strikes experienced legislators like Lt. Gov. Bill Ratliff as unrealistic: "Scrubbing the budget' will find pennies," said Ratliff, who has tried that exercise more than once.

Not surprisingly, the current statewide candidates, Republican and Democratic, break out in hives at the word "taxes." But a few legislators in safe seats are beginning to inflate trial balloons, hoping they'll stay afloat until January. Sen. Eddie Lucio, D-Brownsville, recently suggested a new tax on wholesale soda pop could underwrite free breakfasts and lunches for schoolchildren. Two Democratic members of the Senate Finance Committee, Rodney Ellis of Houston and Judith Zaffarini of Laredo, have proposed an additional dollar on every pack of cigarettes sold in Texas -- raising the overall state tax to $1.41. Health care would get the money raised. Tobacco taxes remain popular, and Ellis said there is "no downside" to such a move. Of course, smokers being asked to foot the bill for a statewide health care crisis might think otherwise.

Dick Lavine of the Center for Public Policy Priorities argues that most Texans would benefit from a state income tax in preference to the current sales tax system. "The income tax and the mandatory property tax cuts [under Texas law] would mean that more than 60% of families would see a tax cut," Lavine says. "The highest-income families, who would pay the most in a new state income tax, would also receive the most benefit from the federal deduction for state income taxes." The Lege has adamantly opposed an income tax, but the most intriguing tax proposal -- a voluntary income tax -- arose recently in testimony before the Joint Committee on Public School Finance. Under such a system, those who chose to pay state income tax would get a refund on state sales taxes and a deduction against their federal income taxes -- and the state would get a stronger and steadier stream of revenue for education.

If Texas is ever to establish a rational tax system, it may take volunteers to demonstrate that less can be more.