Sharp contrasts to national politics and Texas politics were pointed out Friday by state Representative Jim Keffer as he addressed the public at the Brownwood Area Chamber of Commerce monthly luncheon.
“Unlike the federal government, all state governments – Texas has a balanced budget amendment; matter of fact, it’s not even an amendment, it is in the constitution that we will balance our budget every two years.”
Keffer said that he hopes the federal government would follow a similar line of thinking to help get more things accomplished.
“I really have decided that a balanced budget amendment is what we need,” Keffer said. “ I hope we can change the culture that we have in Washington, DC to help get us back on track.”
Keffer outlined some of what the state legislature accomplished during the recently ended legislative session.
“In Texas, we did balance the budget, $178 billion for the biennium which was a $15 billion cut from the prior session,” Keffer said.
He said it was a challenging session in Austin to balance the budget knowing that they had to cut so much from the budget, but he and other elected state officials had to make the tough choices.
“It was something that was the greatest challenge to me personally,” Keffer said. “ I feel like that is what we were elected to do, go down to Austin and balance the budget with the money we had to spend.“
Keffer said that essentially all state departments and state funded programs were affected in some way due to the necessary cuts. He said that although some in Austin want to say that public education was not cut, $4 billion was actually taken away.
“For the first time in 60 years, the state government did not fund population growth, student growth, and that’s a cut.”
As a result, school districts across the state are looking at their priorities and budgets to make sure that they operate under these cuts, Keffer said.
“It’s not good, I didn’t like it, but again I think we were told to go down there and spend within our parameters and not raise taxes so that is what we did.”
Keffer pointed out how national politics affected some of the decisions in the Texas legislature. Considering that many state officials are looking at running in other races, and this being a congressional redistricting year, Keffer said that politics definitely played a role in some state decisions.
“When you look at every statewide official looking for the next race, politics certainly rises a little more than policy sometimes,” Keffer said. “There was a lot of politics.”
Looking ahead, Keffer said that some economists are expecting the same or worse economic times in the following biennium; he said that he does not quite agree with that assessment.
“With the good oil and gas industry, Texas is already showing signs of sales taxes up, signs that we are coming out of the recession faster than any other state,” Keffer said. “I feel like we will be in better shape by next session.”
Keffer said that migration to Texas from other states should also strengthen the economy with 1200 people per day moving to the state. He cautioned however that the state will need to fund infrastructure improvements to be ready for these new residents.
Comparing what Texas has done to the federal government, Keffer said that he is happy with what the state accomplished.
“You can just see, to me, where Austin is different than Washington, DC,” Keffer said. “In Austin we still try to work with each other, although we still have differences.”
With 140 days in the state legislative session, Keffer said that representatives “get in there, get our business done, and go home.”
Pictured above is Keffer talking to Marnita Guinn from Ranger College,
