Amid the flurry of meetings droning throughout the Capitol Complex last week, the most significant may have been one that didn’t happen. Health and Human Services Commissioner Albert Hawkins — onetime budget director for Gov. Bush, newly returned from D.C. — was set to lay out his agency’s budget proposal to House appropriators on Friday morning. Two days earlier, before another House committee, Hawkins had suggested the news wouldn’t be good. Given the governor’s directive to cut 13% through August (the equivalent of a 7% cut for the current fiscal year) and then 12% for the next biennium, the agency could simply not pay for current Medicaid programs, nor fully fund the Children’s Health Insurance Program.
Presumably, on Friday Hawkins was to disclose precisely how bad the news is — but late Thursday, the meeting was abruptly canceled. The HHSC has been extraordinarily tightlipped about its numbers, but the Capitol buzzed that Hawkins would propose abolishing all Medicaid programs not required under federal law and ending altogether the state’s participation in C.H.I.P. — even though C.H.I.P. has a $2.57 federal match per state dollar, and its state funds are dedicated from the tobacco lawsuit settlement. Scuttling C.H.I.P. would end health-care coverage for 500,000 Texas children, doubling the number of uninsured kids in the state at one stroke. (For the effects on optional Medicaid programs, see last week’s Playing the Numbers, Feb. 21.)
Abolishing C.H.I.P. may have been too much to stomach even for the GOP leadership — or perhaps they need more time to generate political cover. Hawkins also canceled his scheduled appearance at Monday’s Senate Finance meeting, and the HHS announced its budget may not be ready for House Appropriations this week, either.
Not every agency head made himself scarce like Hawkins, and Education Commissioner Felipe Alanis got raked over the coals by lawmakers for not cutting more fat — after he’d proposed a 14% cut in administration, even more than the governor had ordered. That’s the same TEA that’s supposed to oversee the GOP’s beloved charter schools and enforce “accountability” in 1,100 state school districts under the Bush mandate to Leave No Child Untested. Alanis gathered up his dignity and said he’d be back this week with more cuts.
Texas Health Commissioner Eduardo Sanchez performed the same drill, although he did point out that in certain areas, the effects of proposed TDH cuts is rather … dramatic. If Sanchez cuts AIDS funding to meet Gov. Perry’s budget targets, 2,500 patients now receiving medicine would be cut off entirely. “Without medications,” said Sanchez, “these are people who would die.” Services would also end for more than 118,000 Texans currently receiving TDH-administered Medicaid services — everything from care for the frail elderly to family violence intervention programs.
Not only sentimental liberals are vexed by the GOP’s budget strategy. State senators were told by the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice that, considering the shortage of guards, the abundance of prisoners, and the mandate to cut the budget — the walls may come tumbling down. Legislators insisted that “tightening our belts” didn’t mean that hardened criminals would be released to prey on helpless taxpayers. But after education and health care, prisons are the largest consumer of state funds.
Gov. Perry, for the moment at least, is unmoved. Pressed by reporters to suggest a way out of the budget dilemma, he testily replied, “What part of ‘No New Taxes’ don’t you understand?” Stung by criticism that indiscriminate budget-slashing might cause real harm, Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth, R-Burleson, who chairs the House committee that didn’t hear from Hawkins, told the Dallas Morning News that Republicans are also concerned about “the weak and the poor” — that is, the “middle class” taxpayers who fund state programs. Perry earlier dismissed the “horror stories” about AIDS patients the same way: “Behind every one of these programs stands a taxpayer.” (Wohlgemuth has also suggested that dedicated C.H.I.P. tobacco money be moved to general revenue.) Of course, the citizens served by these programs are also taxpayers — and, being poor, give up a larger share of their income in regressive Texas taxes than do the middle classes whose suffering brings a tear to Wolgemuth’s eye. In Texas, this is known as “the redistribution of wealth.”
That’s not to say nothing at all got done last week. Amid much fanfare, Sen. Troy Fraser’s SB 310 homeowner’s insurance bill went to the governor, after it was beefed up a bit to require insurers to provide the state with all their rate schedule information — including whether investment losses have fueled recent rate increases. The bill is a de facto admission that since 95% of Texas homeowners policies are unregulated, the Lege can do nothing about runaway rates until the industry provides adequate information.
Meanwhile, cluelessness runs unchecked — Rep. Sid Miller, R-Stephenville, has filed HB 1126 to eliminate the franchise tax on corporations. (Even Gov. Perry is seeking to close loopholes that allow corporations to evade this tax, an effort that is expected to bring in hundreds of millions of new dollars.) That was close on the heels of Miller’s homophobic HB 916, prohibiting two people of the same sex from adopting children. Miller calls it the “Defense of the Family Act”; a more precise name might be “Leave a Few More Orphans Behind.”
But Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, is far ahead of Miller. Tongue firmly in cheek, she filed HB 1002, that would repeal all state taxes effective Sept. 1, 2005. “If we’re going to have a zero-based budget,” announced Thompson, “we may as well have a zero-based taxation system.”
This article appears in February 28 • 2003.
