Health Care Advocates Concerned About Budget
Advocates don't want legislators to think they must choose between funding education and funding health care. Photo by flickr.com/photos/daverugby83.By Brandon Mulder
Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other top officials have been warning further budget cuts may be needed when the next legislative session begins in 2013. But that call for cuts has a group of education and health care advocates rallying against a tighter budget.
Today the Texas Forward coalition announced a petition calling for state legislators to stop pitting health care and education budgeting problems against one another. Texas Forward member Monsterrat Garibay is an Austin school district pre-K teacher.
“It is wrong to mislead Texans into thinking they have to choose between health care and education, or any other public service,” Garibay said.
But the group doesn’t have an alternative to budget cuts yet. Eileen Garcia, CEO of Texans Care for Children, says a report with suggestions is coming.
“As coalitions do, we are still figuring out all the elements that we’ll consider,” Garcia said. “But we definitely think we have a great resource in terms of the report that gets put out.”
The next legislative session begins Jan. 8, 2013.
Texas Forward is a broad-based coalition representing numerous interests beyond just education and health care. The coalition does indeed have alternatives to budget cuts, as mentioned at this press conference. (See the principles laid out at txforward.org.) Furthermore, the state of Texas has an official report on Tax Exemptions & Tax Incidence, prepared by the Comptroller, given to the Governor and Legislature every two years. That report was what was referred to Wednesday as a good resource for identifying revenue for any industries not paying their fair share today.