Will the governor start listening?

You may have noticed there was another voice chiming in about the need for Texas to adopt a balanced approach to bridging its revenue shortfall, a balanced approach that includes finding new revenue as well as imposing some budget cuts.

And, this was not TSTA or another proeducation or public advocacy group that Gov. Rick Perry has politically and erroneously labeled as special interest whiners or doomsday predictors.

The latest call for a sensible, balanced approach to setting the Texas budget comes from Standard & Poor’s, the major bond rating agency.

“We believe that a balanced approach that includes both revenue enhancements and expenditures cuts has a higher potential of success in preserving the state’s longterm structural budget balance than a strategy that relies solely on expenditure cutbacks,” said S&P credit analyst Horacio AldreteSanchez in a new report.

His comments were reported yesterday in the Austin AmericanStatesman.

AldreteSanchez also noted that Texas’ budget hole is not a onetime problem that will disappear as the economy improves. Remember that $10 billion “structural deficit” in the public education budget, thanks to the Legislature’s failure to fully fund Perry’s 2006 reelection year property tax cuts?

Perry, so far, is insisting that the Legislature fill its $27 billion budget hole with spending cuts alone, without even spending part of the state’s $9.4 billion Rainy Day Fund. Such deep cuts would be felt particularly hard in a state that already has a low level of percapita spending, the analyst also noted.

Is the governor listening? Or, can he hear over his own political rhetoric?

http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/sharedgen/blogs/austin/politics/entries/2011/02/21/more_balance_needed_in_texas_b.html

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