Thursday, Americans woke up to the news that the U.S. economy continued to contract for the second straight quarter. For Americans who have been experiencing a higher cost of living in the last year or so, it is not necessarily news as much as it is an affirmation of what they have already been experiencing, which is the economy is in a recession.

If you ask the Biden Administration about these economic realities, however, it appears they would much rather have their ‘heads-in-the-sand’ and mince words, attempting to escape culpability for such economic woes.

According to the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, in the first quarter of 2022, the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) fell by -1.6% (January through March). In the second quarter of 2022 (April through June), the GDP is estimated to have fallen -0.9%.

The report goes on to say, “The decrease in real GDP reflected decreases in private inventory investment, residential fixed investment, federal government spending, state and local government spending, and nonresidential fixed investment…”

The generally accepted definition of a recession, (i.e. the one that has been used by mainstream economists previously) is that of:

Recession: a period of temporary economic decline during which trade and industrial activity are reduced, generally identified by a fall in GDP in two successive quarters.

Yet, despite this previously accepted definition, the Biden Administration, and allies in the national media, continue to dance around the economic reality, blaming everything and everyone else but their own economic policies and reactions to the ongoing historic inflation and runaway spending by the federal government.

For taxpayers, the road ahead looks bleak, but it does not have to.

What Does This Mean for Texas Taxpayers?

 Texas, in somewhat contrast, continues to boast economic growth and success. That is not to say it is without its problems, however, Texas taxpayers, and more broadly Texans are also feeling the economic impacts of historic inflation, runaway government spending, and higher costs of living.

Today’s economic realities really speak to the importance of ensuring that Texas’ state and local governments work to ensure that things like taxes are not raised at all, especially in a recession environment.

Taxpayers should demand that their local governments adopt the ‘no new revenue rates’ as they are in the process of finalizing and adopting their operating budgets for the next year, right now.

Similarly, as the state legislature gets set to convene in January of 2023, facing a historic revenue surplus (i.e. over-collected taxpayer dollars), taxpayers should demand that their state lawmakers practice fiscal responsibility, and not allow them to plunder the money and spend it on pet projects, while everyday Texans continue to suffer from things like rising property taxes all across the state, despite being told they have been provided relief in recent legislative sessions.

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR), recently released the ‘Texas Prosperity Plan’ to help address many of the economic challenges facing the state.

Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, eliminating the property tax, and freezing state spending by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN put Texas on a path to fiscal sanity and future prosperity if we amplify our voices loud enough.

If you have spent any amount of time in politics I am sure you have heard the phrase “The Overton Window” before. Today we are going to talk about what it is, and how to use this concept to our advantage as conservatives.

Joseph Overton was an American policy analyst after whom the concept is named after. Overton’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy defines the Overton Window as:

“a model for understanding how ideas in society change over time and influence politics. The core concept is that politicians are limited in what policy ideas they can support — they generally only pursue policies that are widely accepted throughout society as legitimate policy options. These policies lie inside the Overton Window. Other policy ideas exist, but politicians risk losing popular support if they champion these ideas. These policies lie outside the Overton Window.”

A political policy that is widely accepted in society falls within “the window” and is regarded as a sound, popular policy. A policy that is outside the window is on a spectrum that ranges from sensible to unthinkable (as the graphic above illustrates).  The most important thing to understand about the Overton Window is that it is not static, it is always on the move. Not only can the window shift left or right, but the window itself can also expand and contract based on a number of different cultural and political factors.

This is where understanding the window and how it moves is important to voters. You can think of the window as where politicians stay the vast majority of the time. It is the political “safe zone” in which they can debate and implement policy while simultaneously safely ensuring their reelection. Operating outside of the Overton Window as a politician is extremely dangerous and usually results in your ejection from the political realm. It is very rare for a politician to be able to move the window by themselves by courageously endorsing policies that lie outside the window at any given time. More often, it is a societal change that shifts the window, and politicians adapt based on what is acceptable within society.

As the late Andrew Breitbart famously declared, “Politics is downstream from culture”. This is really what the Overton Window itself is about. Let’s think of a few examples over the last few decades.

In 2008, California passed Proposition 8 which banned gay marriage in the state. Yes, recently California, the leftist capitol of America, banned gay marriage. Yet, just 7 years later in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Obergefell v. Hodges, requiring all states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples and to recognize same-sex marriages validly performed in other jurisdictions.

In 7 short years, this issue was turned on its head. Was this because of the Supreme Court ruling alone? No, it was due to political activism which included parades in the streets, a heavy presence on television, and social media. All of these things contributed to shifting the Overton Window left on the issue. It no longer was politically toxic to speak about it. President Barrack Obama at one time publicly opposed gay marriage, but when the window shifted so did his position. If we look at the many radical policy changes that have taken place over the last few years, we need to understand that it is not politicians that are causing this, but society at large. It is the collective beliefs in America that allows politicians to openly speak about things like men being women, ‘drag queen story hour’, or legalizing hallucinogens.

This is what the far left has become experts at, pulling the window as far left as they can through submersing the public in leftist ideology. Look at Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, an open socialist, and largely someone who would have been deemed unelectable a decade ago, and yet the left has become extremely efficient at pushing their “unthinkable” ideas until they become “radical”, then “acceptable”, until eventually becoming accepted.

The Overton Window is not a metric that can describe everything about politics. It tells us that politicians will not support whatever policy they want, but rather they will only support policies that they believe will get them reelected. Overton’s Mackinac Center for Public Policy puts it this way:

“All of this suggests that politicians are more followers than they are leaders — it’s the rest of us who ultimately determine the types of policies they’ll get behind. It also implies that our social institutions — families, workplaces, friends, media, churches, voluntary associations, think tanks, schools, charities, and many other phenomena that establish and reinforce societal norms — are more important to shaping our politics than we typically credit them for.”

If you are interested in changing policy, especially fiscal policy, then the Overton Window is an important concept to understand. We do not change political policy by electing politicians, we change policy by changing society. The battle in politics is in the cultural realm and if conservatives are not willing to fight on that battleground we will continue to lose.

For Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR), we have seen the concept of eliminating property taxes go from “unthinkable”, to “radical”, and we are now in the process of it becoming “acceptable”. The shift of the Overton Window on something like property taxes is shown in the Republican Party of Texas platform right now. The issue missed becoming a legislative priority of the party itself by just a handful of votes. TFR will continue to pull the Overton Window until owning your home is possible and paying perpetual rent to the government is abolished. Will you help us pull the window?

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, eliminating the property tax, and freezing state spending by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN put Texas on a path to fiscal sanity and future prosperity if we amplify our voices loud enough.

Last week, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar announced an updated revenue estimate, which increased our continually growing budget surplus by nearly $14 billion. Yes, you heard that right $14 billion more! This raised the previous estimate from roughly $13 billion to a staggering and historic $26.95 billion dollars!

What exactly does this mean? Most taxpayers we have spoken to do not really understand how significant this projected surplus is and what an opportunity this could be them if lawmakers are convinced to do the right thing.

This projected surplus is for the current 2022-2023 biennium, which means the Texas legislature will have the option to allocate this money in a few different ways in the next legislative session set to begin in January of 2023. As you can imagine, there are differing opinions on what it will be used for.

(h/t Mike Openshaw)

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR) has been a consistent advocate for returning the surplus to its rightful owners, you the taxpayer. More specifically, we want lawmakers to put Texas on a path toward property tax elimination, and we believe the most practical place to start is by compressing the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) portion of school property taxes statewide by using the surplus dollars to ‘buy them down’. Our plan is very similar to other organizations, including the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), a conservative Texas public policy think tank in Austin. We just think we can get their faster, by also imploring lawmakers to freeze and cut ongoing government expenditures.

Both Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Lt. Governor Dan Patrick have come out in support of the idea of using a portion of the massive surplus to lower property taxes for Texans. Patrick recently released an incredibly disappointing statement, however, where he advocated for a paltry $4 billion of the massive surplus to be used in the form of property tax “relief” to help already drowning taxpayers. This would be a pathetic drop in the bucket for what is actually needed and would offer almost no actual help to taxpayers who are also currently reeling from a higher cost of living, largely due to skyrocketing prices as a result of historic 9.1% inflation and horrible U.S. monetary policy over the course of the last few years.

What Texas taxpayers need to understand is that a budget surplus should not be allowed to be looked at as a shopping spree for politicians hoping to spread money around growing the size and scope of the government. A surplus is when the government brought in WAY too much money based on the budget passed in the previous legislative session. We must remember, that the government is not “for profit” and should not be plundering the money of taxpayers because they overshot projections. That surplus is in every sense OUR money, and the government has no right to keep it, especially if the dominant party in Texas claims to be “fiscally conservative” and advocates for small government. If that is true, why is our budget on track to increase by 300% since Republicans took power in the early 2000s?

Several sources have indicated to TFR that decisions have already been made by those in leadership positions in Austin to use portions of the surplus to deal with Medicaid, border security, and “hardening” our public schools. It seems likely that after all that is spent, there will be roughly $20 billion left. So why is Dan Patrick only advocating for $4 billion? The only explanation we can come up with is that he wants to grow the government. Fiscally irresponsible decisions like this are no different than lawmakers sticking their hands in your pocket and robbing you directly, outright plundering Texas taxpayers and anyone who says any different is lying to you.

We should demand better from our representatives. Using $20 billion in M&O compression would be substantial for taxpayers who have been taxed enough already!

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, eliminating the property tax, and freezing state spending by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN put Texas on a path to fiscal sanity and future prosperity if we amplify our voices loud enough.

Thursday, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar released his updated revenue estimate for the state of Texas. Previously the surplus estimate coming off of the most recent legislative session was around $8 billion. This estimate was updated in November of 2021 to be closer to $12 billion. In a House Appropriation Committee hearing on Tuesday, Comptroller Hegar said that the number he would reveal Thursday would be “Astounding” as we had reported earlier this week.

His announcement did not disappoint. In his latest update, he reported that the current unallocated dollars for the Texas budget is $26.95 billion. From the release:

“In a July 14 letter to state leadership, Hegar said the state will have $149.07 billion in GR-R funds available for general-purpose spending for the 2022-23 biennium, resulting in a projected fiscal 2023 ending balance of $26.95 billion, an increase of $14.95 billion from the November projected balance. The ending balance does not account for any 2022-23 supplemental appropriations the Legislature may make.”

This is both a historical number and potentially a dangerous one. With this amount of “free” money to spend, lawmakers are going to have to make some hard decisions. Are we going to use this money to continue to grow the government as we have in the past, or will our self-proclaimed “Conservative” lawmakers make good on their promises of smaller government and fiscal restraint?

Unfortunately, the most likely outcome for much of this projected surplus is that it will be spread around like that of a slush fund, enriching bureaucrats and agencies with money they plan on wasting at the expense of taxpayers. Lawmakers have an alternative, one that Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR), the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), and even Texas Governor Greg Abbott have come out in support of. Lawmakers can use all of this surplus money to pay down the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) compression rates and put us on a path to property tax elimination. The 2022 Republican Party of Texas platform was recently passed with language calling for this exact outcome.

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, eliminating the property tax, and freezing state spending by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN put Texas on a path to fiscal sanity and future prosperity if we amplify our voices loud enough.

Tuesday, the House Appropriations Committee held its first interim hearing to consider some of their assigned interim charges involving the state budget. Among the invited testimony was that of Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar, who came to give a general update to lawmakers on the state’s current revenue and economic outlook. For months Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR) has been talking about the existing massive budget surplus that is projected to just keep getting bigger and bigger. Well, guess what? In yesterday’s hearing, Hegar revealed he would be announcing yet another revenue increase on Thursday and that everyone is going to be really surprised by the numbers.

Throughout his update, he noted quite a few interesting things about revenues in Texas. Here is some of what he said in the committee hearing:

• Texas non-farm employment is up 6.1% since May 2021 (highest among 10 most populous states)
• The Unemployment Rate is 4.2% in Texas
• He acknowledged the hardship of the historical inflation reported in May as that of 8.6% (Wednesday, the Consumer Price Index indicated it had increased in June to 9.1%)
• The average cost for a gallon of gas in Texas was $4.07
• He expects higher interest rates to slow the growth of  both the U.S. and Texas economies
• Tax revenue has rebounded strongly with most major tax streams surpassing pre-pandemic levels
• Sales tax revenues have been “exceptionally strong” and the average monthly collection in the last year has been $3.5 billion (a massive increase)
• Adjusted inflation revenue for Year-over-Year (YoY) growth is 3.7%, which is more than 3 times their initial estimate of 1.1%
• Oil and gas severance tax revenues in the last 3 months have exceeded $3.1 billion (this surpasses many annual revenues historically!)
• In the last 10 months, oil tax revenue is up 87.9%

After his presentation, he went on to say, “The Texas economy has been exceptionally strong since the last revised BRE (Biennial Revenue Estimate) in November of last year [2021]”. We will be releasing a revised BRE on Thursday… But I am going to warn you… stay seated in your seat when you read it. It is astonishing growth.” Hegar then went on to remind the committee that 58% of all tax revenue is sales tax revenue and that it is the main driver of revenue in Texas and a strong indicator of economic health. He finished his remarks by saying he has seen more revenue growth in the past year compared to the previous year than any year he has ever seen in his time in elected office.

Needless to say, this simply reinforces a fact that TFR has repeated often in the last year, that Texas does not have a revenue problem we have a spending problem! The question on Texas taxpayers’ minds should be, “What will we spend this ‘astonishing revenue’ on?”

Throughout the Comptroller’s portion of the hearing, only one member; Taxpayer Champion State Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), suggested that Texas should, “be giving as much of it back to taxpayers as possible.” This is something TFR agrees with and has suggested many times should be done in the form of providing true property tax relief, by using the surplus money to ‘buy down’ the Maintenance and Operations (M&O) portion of the property tax.

TFR is hopeful that the idea of property tax elimination is gaining traction in the state legislature as the surplus revenue estimate continues to grow, however, some lawmakers’ questions in the committee hearing were revealing as to their motivations to spend much of that money on other pet projects. As an example, when asked by Schaefer what Hegar would suggest spending the excess revenue on, his answer was infrastructure, without giving any specifics as to what that term actually means. Many other committee members echoed Hegar’s sentiments throughout the hearing.

Stay tuned Thursday as we report on the updated BRE.

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for REAL property tax relief by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN get real tax relief if we amplify our voices loud enough.

Wednesday, the Republican Party of Texas released its 2022 Platform as approved by delegates to its State Convention in mid-June. 

Among the 274 ‘planks’ or policy positions were all three of the items set forth in Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s (TFR) Texas Prosperity Plan, which was introduced in early June and calls for the banning of taxpayer-funded lobbying, the elimination of the property tax, and freezing state spending as a means to ensure fiscal sanity and prosperity for both current and future generations of Texans.

Thousands of Republican activists from across the state of Texas convened in Houston in mid-June to deliberate and craft the 2022 Texas GOP Platform, as a statement of policy positions for the entirety of the party, and as a guide for elected officials up and down the ballot who run under the Republican banner. 

The language included in the 2022 Texas GOP Platform can be seen here:

Plank 76. State Fiscal Restraint: We urge the Legislature to amend the Texas Constitution and State statute with a stricter spending limitation based on US Census population growth plus inflation, as measured by the Consumer Price Index, and apply the new limit to Texas’s total government budget. We call on the Texas State Legislature to freeze State spending until wasteful programs have been eliminated, a sustainable size of government has been restored, and substantive property tax relief has been provided to Texas citizens. Any budget surplus shall be applied to property tax relief.

Plank 90. Axe the Property Tax: We support replacing the property tax system for businesses and individuals with an alternative other than the income tax and requiring voter approval to increase the overall tax burden. We urge the Legislature to immediately develop a transition plan that is a net tax cut.

Plank 232. Tax-Funded Lobbying: We oppose using tax dollars to hire lobbyists or paying tax dollars to associations that lobby the Legislature.

What is Next?

The Texas Legislature and every statewide elected office has been controlled by Republicans for nearly two decades. The track record for these same elected officials with regard to consideration of their own party’s platform has been spotty at best in that same time period.

The next legislative session is set to begin in January of 2023. Your elected officials need to hear from you.

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for banning taxpayer-funded lobbying, eliminating the property tax, and freezing state spending by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN put Texas on a path to fiscal sanity and future prosperity if we amplify our voices loud enough.

Recently Texans for Fiscal Responsibility (TFR) released its Texas Prosperity Plan focusing on policy goals for the upcoming Texas legislative session set to begin in January of 2023. The plan focuses on three specific issues to reform: 1) Eliminating Property Taxes 2) Freezing the Texas Budget 3) Banning Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying. Just a few weeks ago TFR was at the Republican Party State Convention in Houston where we had the privilege of speaking to thousands of taxpayers and activists about our plan, and the response was overwhelmingly positive, especially when it came to property taxes and budgetary restraint. One of the biggest takeaways from the convention, however, was related to the idea of banning taxpayer-funded lobbying. Seemingly, many of those in attendance knew they opposed the practice in principle but at the same time did not understand what it is or why it is such a problem.

Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying is the practice of local political subdivisions (School Districts, Cities, Counties, etc) hiring lobbyists in Austin to lobby lawmakers to increase the local government’s ability to tax and regulate more. Essentially it is using your tax dollars to hire lobbyists to actively work against your best interests. It is an innately corrupt and immoral practice and a major conflict of interest for taxpayers.

In a Gallup poll in 2011, Americans were asked which institutions they believed had too much power and first on the list were Lobbyists with 71% of respondents agreeing they had too much power. They beat out major corporations, banks, and the federal government.

Gallup also periodically does a poll called the “Honesty and Ethics of Professions Ranking” that determines which professions Americans put their trust in. In the recent 2021 poll, lobbyists came in dead last, with only 5% of respondents saying they have very high ethical standards. 

Although lobbying is continually ranked as untrustworthy and unethical, it remains one of the more effective means of influencing policy in both the federal and state governments. The important distinction to be made between private lobbying and taxpayer-funded lobbying is that private lobbying is typically large private corporations that use their profits and capital to advocate for policy that is beneficial to them. Despite negative feelings toward the practice, lobbying has been ruled as free speech by the Supreme Court which makes banning the practice difficult in general. In 1967 a Supreme Court decision said:

U.S. Supreme Court (1967): [The] rights to assemble peaceably and to petition for a redress of grievances are among the most precious of the liberties safeguarded by the Bill of Rights. These rights, moreover, are intimately connected, both in origin and in purpose, with the other First Amendment rights of free speech and free press.

The question is not whether lobbying should be allowed then, but whether the government has the right to lobby itself? Republican primary voters in 2020 answered that question with a resounding “NO!”. In March of 2020, a supermajority of Texas Republican primary voters supported the following ballot proposition:

“Texas should ban the practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying, which allows your tax dollars to be spent on lobbyists who work against the taxpayer.” (YES – 94.29%, NO – 5.71%).

When local governments hire lobbyists it leaves the nearly 30 million Texas taxpayers at a huge disadvantage. How is the average Texan supposed to effectively get their lawmaker’s attention while also working a 9-5 job and simultaneously trying to find time to travel down to Austin and advocate for themselves (using their own free time and expenses) while lobbyists are paid full time to actively work against them? The simple answer is they can’t compete against lobbyists this way and ultimately they lose time and time again in the policy arena as a result. This is one of the main reasons why getting activists involved in state government is so difficult, because it seems like an almost impossible feat to most.

It is immoral to force taxpayers to fund lobbying efforts that work against them. This is especially true when we already elect local officials to do this, and they are effectively hiring out the job we elected them to do in the first place. Our local officials are supposed to be elected to advocate for us, but what they have done is hire the proverbial fox to guard the henhouse.

It is time we end this practice once and for all, and end the immoral practice of taxpayer-funded lobbying.

How can you help? Go read the Texas Prosperity Plan for yourself and voice your support for Banning Taxpayer-Funded Lobbying by signing up to support the TPP. Sign up for The Fiscal Note to keep up to date on all fiscal issues that affect Texans, especially our broken property tax system. We CAN end this practice if we amplify our voices loud enough.