August 10, 2017      5:02 PM

Lawmakers face a manageable, but growing, structural budget gap going into 2019

“The bottom line is we’ve made some adjustments to the time of certain things and the payment of other things, and when you add it all together, it’s $8 billion.”

The latest state budget has created an $8 billion structural gap that will be the first order of business when lawmakers return to Austin in 2019.

Good or bad, that’s probably worth considering before the Senate Public Education Committee picks up the House’s $1.8 billion school finance bill on Friday morning. The methods lawmakers used to balance the budget aren’t new, but the scope of the debt is broader and deeper.

The Texas Taxpayers and Research Association has posted its typical post-session review, and only a quarter of the incoming shortfall can be attributed to underfunding Medicaid. Dale Craymer of TTARA says the methods lawmakers used was the standard arsenal of tools to balance a budget that came in at over $200 billion.

By Kimberly Reeves

Copyright August 10, 2017, Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved