Good morning, 

Yesterday I asked readers how the looming budget shortfall should be addressed by state lawmakers. To summarize the response: legislators better come to Austin ready to significantly cut the size of government.

Here is today's Texas Minute.

– Michael Quinn Sullivan 

Thursday, November 12, 2020
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• “America is Crumbling” – that’s the provocative title of a new commentary from Cisco businessman Jon Francis. 
      
• “If the decline is to be stopped, there is no time for political niceties, doublespeak, or hedging,” he writes. “While I am profoundly proud of America’s Founders, I have the opposite feeling about my own generation. We have squandered the gift of freedom that we were given. If feelings of fear and of being overwhelmed and of hopelessness are present, it is for good reason. We are about to lose freedom completely.”
      
• If you wish to submit a commentary to Texas Scorecard, please send it to [email protected].

• Shame on the voters in Amarillo for voting against big spending and new debt! That’s the message coming from their mayor.
      
• Thomas Warren reports that by a nearly 24-point margin Amarillo voters turned down a $275 million bond for various downtown projects. The city’s mayor, Ginger Nelson, criticized the results with the claim many who voted “no” acted on “incorrect facts” from a billboard.
     
• Wow... that must have been some billboard.

• As the all-Democrat Austin City Council prepares for a regularly scheduled meeting tonight, taxpayers have expressed concerns about one of the  council’s agenda items: spending nearly $1 million to rent a questionable 60-day “emergency housing” facility – allegedly due to COVID-19.
       
• Adam Cahn reports the plan would fund a COVID isolation facility in a northwest Austin hotel for 60 days, with the option to extend for another three months. 
   
• Northwest Austin residents told Cahn they believe city hall is using COVID as a smokescreen to put a homeless shelter in their neighborhood. This is not without precedent; the city has already used hotels as homeless shelters, spending exorbitant amounts of citizens’ cash to house only a handful of homeless in low-barrier and high-risk places. In 2019 the city council spent $8 million to buy a run-down hotel for 81 homeless individuals.

• Yesterday’s Texas Minute included this question: “With the State of Texas facing a $4.6 billion budget shortfall, according to the Comptroller, legislators will have three choices. Which would you pick?” The three choices were: raise taxes/revenues, use gimmicks, or cut spending.
           

• The response was bigger than any question we’ve asked so far... And the “margin” was even bigger; bigger than I’ve ever seen in the One Click Survey. We had 99.4 percent of respondents say, “Cut Spending.” The remainder was tied: 0.3 percent for gimmicks, and 0.3 percent for higher taxes or new revenues.
      
• “Cut spending is the only answer.” – Roger T. of Lubbock
   
• “We as citizens when faced with a reduction in income (or an increase in needed expenses) must reduce our spending if we are to stay solvent.” – James W. of Ingram

• NOTE: There are 60 days until the start of the 87th Legislative Session on January 12, 2021.

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