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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (148607)	11/1/2010 3:38:13 PM
From: Dale Baker	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543056

The Texas state budget is $25 billion in the red after many years of Republican control of the governorship and the legislature.

To: Sam who wrote (148607)	11/1/2010 4:16:34 PM
From: JohnM	Respond to of 543056

We can add New Jersey to your list. The fiscal crisis started in the mid 90s under Christie Whitman, Republican governor. The story is familiar but the short version is she stopped making payments to the state pension plan because she argued stock market increases would cover it. Something, as you say, for nothing. It's a back and forth since then with Republican and Dem controlled legislatures and governors. But once you have a strong anti-tax political culture in place, put in place by Reps and maintained by Reps, you can never correct these things. In our case, the original sin was a Republican one, coupled with an anti-tax mentality. And then followed by the bromide that we are living beyond our means. One of these days, one hopes, the realization will dawn that there are fixes for all this which include raising revenue in a variety of ways. But it's not going to happen with some serious tears along the way.