"The first draft of the 2010-11 Texas state budget reinforces the message from Comptroller Susan Combs' revenue estimate last week. The Texas Legislature needs to get to work on pruning the next state budget back within the available revenue.

"The legislature needs to be mindful of the hard lesson it learned in 2001, when it spent the entire accumulated surplus of the 1990s at once and dug itself a $10 billion hole in 2003. The way for the legislature to avoid setting the same trap for itself is to continue to show fiscal restraint.”

The Honorable Talmadge Heflin is Director of the Center for Fiscal Policy at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. Heflin served 11 terms in the Texas House of Representatives and chaired the House Appropriations Committee in 2003, leading the Texas Legislature’s successful efforts to close a $10 billion budget deficit without a tax increase.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation is a non-profit, free-market research institute based in Austin. More information can be found on the Foundation’s website, www.TexasPolicy.com.

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