Promise Broken:
In the end, the House and Senate couldn’t agree on a formula.
PolitiFact examines Gov. Greg Abbott’s promise to impose a stricter constitutional spending cap.
State Sen. Kelly Hancock offered a proposal in the 2015 legislative session in line with a campaign promise by Gov. Greg Abbott to tighten an existing cap on state spending.
In his Bicentennial Blueprint while running for governor, Abbott said the state budget had grown too quickly. “Texas’ current constitu- tional spending limit must be strengthened so that it can provide a meaningful check on the growth of state spending into the future,” Abbott said.
To fix that, he proposed: “Amend the Texas Constitu- tion and state statute with a stricter spending limitation based on population growth and inflation.”
During this spring’s legislative session, Hancock, R-North Richland Hills, won Senate approval of related legislation including language providing for a statutory spending cap along similar lines.
Hancock’s proposal, which cleared a Senate committee by April 7, would present voters with a proposed amendment limiting the biennial growth of all state spending to the estimated average growth in the state’s popula- tion adjusted by the estimated average rate of inflation in the state for the two years preceding the spending and the two years afterward. Under the change, lawmakers could exceed the cap only by threefifths votes of the Texas House and Senate.
Such a constitutional amendment would have to be approved by voters statewide.
The Senate on April 9 sent the House related legislation, Senate Bill 9, rewritten during floor debate to give state leaders a path toward limiting spending to population growth plus inflation but without that being put into the state Constitution.
Hancock said after the action: “A constitutional change would have written this adjustment in permanent marker, but we didn’t have the votes for that. So we settled for writing it in pen.”
Hancock added that he believed his legislation, if it became law, would further tighten spending. “Not everything that’s worth doing in Austin requires a constitutional change,” Hancock said.
Subsequently, a House pan-
el revised SB 9, changing the Senate-approved population-plus-inflation calculation by calling instead for the Legislative Budget Board to recommend caps for individual “spending categories,” including education, health care and transportation.
As reported by the Austin American-Statesman at the time, the House proposal called for the budget board to calculate the caps based on “the rate of inflation in a representative set of goods and services for which appropriations are made for that spending category,” meaning the spending limit for things like education would be specifically tailored to the inflation and population rates relevant to that industry.
House members approved that version on May 27, but the Senate refused to concur with the changes.
The bodies moved to form a joint conference committee, but the ses- sion ended without an agreed-upon measure.
A May 31, 2015, Texas Tribune story said leaders of the Senate and House blamed the other side. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said: “The Senate passed the people’s priorities, the governor’s priorities and my priorities on the spending cap and ethics reform during this legis- lative session. The House chose to ignore these very important bills.”
House Speaker Joe Straus argued it was the Senate that was intractable on an issue that defied simple answers.
“The House passed responsible, well-thoughtout language that recognizes the spending limit is a complicated issue, not a sound bite,” Straus said. “The Senate rejected this approach.”
Given that Abbott sought a constitutional amendment tightening the spending cap, we rate this a Promise Broken.