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Gov. Perry: Want To Cut Spending? Change The Constitution

Talk Radio News Service
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Governor Rick Perry says state spending should be constitutionally restricted.

By tying spending to population increases and inflation, Perry says the budgeting process will be more truthful.

Speaking at the Fort Worth Club Wednesday, Governor Rick Perry said the state of Texas is the envy of the nation.

“I probably couldn’t get the other 49 governors to stand up and say they’d want to be Texas,” Perry said, “but I can assure you that they would stand up and say they’d love to have the economy the State of Texas has today.”

And to preserve our economy, Perry is promoting his Budget Compact. It calls for no tax increases. Increases in spending would be allowed only to accommodate population growth and inflation. He wants the spending restriction added to the Texas Constitution.

He says the fact that sales tax collection is up shouldn’t give us a false sense of security.

“It’s important however that we don’t interpret those higher tax collections as a license to go spend willy nilly,” Perry said.  “It is actually an opportunity for us to make some decisions to put policies in place to make our budget even more sound.”

Perry has been criticized for pushing deep cuts to last year’s budget, including more than a two billion dollar reduction in public education spending.

The Governor has veto power over the two-year budget legislators will present to him in 2013.

Courtney Collins has been working as a broadcast journalist since graduating from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University in 2004. Before coming to KERA in 2011, Courtney worked as a reporter for NPR member station WAMU in Washington D.C. While there she covered daily news and reported for the station’s weekly news magazine, Metro Connection.