The Texas state comptroller estimated Texas will generate $96.2 billion in revenue for the 2014-2015 fiscal cycle and reported Texas collected $8.8 billion more in revenue than expected during the last fiscal year.
When unemployment in Texas was at its highest in a decade and the state government faced a $27 billion shortfall in 2011, legislators wrote what was then described as a “cut-to-the-bone” budget.
And it worked.
According to the Associated Press, “unemployment now is at a four-year low of 6.2 percent, sales tax receipts are skyrocketing and money is pouring into state coffers behind a new energy boom.”
And while Texas is projected to have more revenue to spend, Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst have indicated they would “limit any increase in state spending to a sum of population growth plus inflation, or 9.85 percent,” to prevent Texas from racking another budget shortfall.