1. Since ’06, Texas added nearly 3 times more jobs than all others combined. Nearly 4 times as many private sector jobs. You can go back to January 2001, a month after Rick Perry took office, and the numbers look similar. Or just the past year.

2. Since 2006, Texas added >100x more new jobs than New York and 10x second place Louisiana.

3. Since the recession “ended” in 2009, Texas has added exactly as many net new jobs as the rest of America’s 49 states combined.

4. Texas accounts for only about 8% of the nation’s population but 16.5% of U.S. exports. Texas is currently on top, and Texas exports are rising faster than the rest of the nation. Obama says he wants to double exports during his administration. Why doesn’t he look to Texas for the blueprint?

5. Texas has the second? lowest debt per capita, and as Erick mentioned, Texas recently had its bond rating upgraded from AA to AA+, its highest level ever.

As far as a “projected budget deficit,” Democrats said the same thing about this past sesssion for the 2012-2013 biennium. They wildly exaggerated the “deficit,” throwing out numbers like 27 billion. In the end, Texas modestly trimmed spending (by single-digit percentages) and didn’t raise taxes, and the Comptroller certified the budget as balanced, as is required by our Constitution in Texas.

Indeed, the Comptroller may very well boost revenue projections in Texas if these trends persist:
http://www.texasahead.org/economy/outlook.html

“Texas sales tax receipts for June 2011 were 7.2 percent higher than for June 2010.

For fiscal 2010, state sales tax receipts were down 6.6 percent from fiscal 2009, however sales tax collections have increased for 15 consecutive months, boosted by strong business spending in the oil and gas and manufacturing sectors. Retail sales also have improved, contributing to a 9 percent increase in sales tax receipts for the first 10 months of fiscal 2011.

Motor vehicle sales tax collections for June 2011 were 11.4 percent higher in Texas than for June 2010.”

So, revenues are increasing substantially. Shortfalls and surpluses all really depend on the economy. Texas has a surplus of somewhere between 6 and 7 billion dollars in a Rainy Day Fund, so if there is a shortfall due to a national double dip recession (increasingly likely, unfortunately), and it truly cannot be solved by trimming spending by a few percentage points (highly unlikely), lawmakers can rely on those billions in the Rainy Day Fund. Thank goodness Rick Perry didn’t allow that fund to be drained this year, despite Democrats and moderate Republicans working their hardest together to make that happen.

One thing about Texas’ budget is that it we do not use the baseline method of just adding to whatever we did last time (although sometimes they do that, de facto). We start from scratch every two years. Zero-based budgeting. It works great. We also have a robust sunset process that has no problem ending entire agencies if they can’t justify their existence. It’s not theoretical. Agencies and programs are often ended by the sunset process.

The other thing to consider about the Texas budget is that the biggest cost drivers right now aren’t state programs, really. It’s the federal program, Medicaid. Meanwhile, Texas is a tax-donor state, getting much less back than Washington takes in taxes.