Despite widespread anger at high taxes and bloated government spending, cutting government programs continues to be a near-impossible political task. Why can’t the political system transfer broad popular support for cutting wasteful spending into real action?

Gov. Rick Perry announced the addition of 28 issues to the call of the current legislative session. The governor’s action allows the Texas House and Senate to consider legislation relating to these issues during the special session.

North Carolina Legislature passed a $14.8 billion budget for 2003-04, which included the continuation of the sales and income taxes ($384 million). Click to see how your representative voted on the NC 2003-04 budget. House VotesSenate Votes

The state budget recently passed by the Texas Legislature is historic! This is the first time in 20 years that state spending has been cut. Yet those cuts did not preclude the legislature from providing more than $1 billion in new money to both education as well as to health and human services. The following are highlights of the budget as well as of the Gubernatorial vetoes!

Recently, Congress passed the “Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act of 2003,” a tax cut that addresses a number of flaws in the current tax code. Importantly, the tax bill focused on incentives, with across-the-board tax cuts, reductions in the cost of capital, and changes in depreciation that would foster investment by small business. In addition, it sought to remove punitive elements of the code, such as double taxation and the marriage penalty. The bill that finally passed was less than half of what President Bush initially proposed. Using the deficit for leverage, the Senate capped the tax cut. Interestingly, they also added $20 billion in new spending to bail out debt-ridden states, which raises questions about whether they were concerned about the deficit or what was left for them to spend.

The 2003 New Hampshire budget battle has been a classic confrontation between the big spenders and those promoting fiscal responsibility. As submitted, Governor Craig Benson’s budget called for a 6% increase in state spending and contained no new taxes or increases. Having passed the House of Representatives and the Senate, the budget now contains an increase of 13% in state spending, spends all of the state bailout money provided for by the Congress and levies a new tax on nursing homes.

This article originally ran in the Winston-Salem Journal. EDUCATORS UPSET OVER CUTS; BUDGET REDUCTIONS WILL BE FELT IN THE CLASSROOMS, OFFICIALS SAY RALEIGH -- Education leaders told state senators yesterday that they can't handle more cuts in public education. Anti-tax activists told them that taxpayers can't handle more tax increases.

Congress is off to the races as a number of major legislative initiatives jockey for consideration on the floor of the House. While Funny Cide failed to win the Triple Crown in the mud at Belmont this past weekend, Congress is chomping at the bit with its own Trifecta: Spend, Spend Some More, and Spend Even More Than That.

Today, Citizens for a Sound Economy (CSE) praised the Bush administration for improving the process through which private companies compete to provide commercial services to the public. Federal agencies currently employ both public and private sector resources to perform a variety of commercial services – services like computer support, collecting fees at National Parks, and landscaping to name a few.