On July 17th, in a letter to Governor Greg Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, and House Speaker Dade Phelan, Texas Comptroller Glenn Hegar reported that general revenue-related collections for the 2024 fiscal year have been tracking with the 2024-2025 Certification Revenue Estimate (CRE). 

Despite discrepancies in collections, with natural gas production revenue down and interest revenue up from estimated forecasts, Hegar claimed that “on net with all GR-R sources considered together, the outlook for total 2024-25 GR-R revenue does not differ materially from the CRE.”

The Comptroller’s letter stated clearly that “Assuming no further legislative action ahead of the 89th Legislature, my office estimates a 2024-25 ending balance of $21.2 billion.” 

This is just another way of saying that the State is projected to have roughly $21.2 billion in over-collected taxpayer money. 

Per usual, establishment politicians are already grasping to find new ways to spend the surplus that doesn’t involve returning the money to its rightful owners: you, the taxpayers.

While Texans are drowning in property taxes and the state faces an unprecedented affordability crisis, lawmakers deliberately take more from their constituent’s wallets than is necessary to perform core functions of government. Instead of providing even a semblance of consolation to the people they serve, they continuously find new methods of wasting taxpayer funds.

In 2023, the Texas legislature passed the largest spending increase in history. Embedded within that budget were numerous examples of corporate welfare, with the state government becoming overly involved in the free market and using tax dollars to choose winners and losers in what is supposed to be a competitive system. 

Meanwhile, elected officials provided Texans with measly property tax relief while promoting it as an unprecedented achievement.

Unless Texans begin holding their elected representatives accountable, there’s no doubt that lawmakers will seize the opportunity to expand state spending even further in the next session. Instead of irresponsibly wasting the massive surplus, leaders can restore fiscal sanity in the Lone Star State and enact authentically conservative fiscal policy that will allow Texas to serve as an economic example to the rest of the nation. 

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility has proposed this plan for how to spend the budget surplus:

• Spending less at the state and local levels, strengthen the state’s spending limit with the rate of population growth plus inflation covering all state funds, and have that spending limit also cover local government spending similar to Colorado’s Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights.
• Taxing less by putting local property taxes on a path to elimination using surpluses to reduce school district M&O property tax rates until they are zero. Local governments should lower spending and then leverage their surpluses to reduce their property tax rates until they are zero.
• Regulating less by removing barriers to work and removing burdensome occupational licensing restrictions. 

Voters have made it known that they desire fiscal responsibility, limited government spending, and legislative accountability. 

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility will continue to educate and advocate for these values in Austin and throughout the state. 

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