Texas Government Budgeting - Paper Example

Major Sources of Income for the State of Texas and the Advantages and Disadvantages of Not Having a State Tax

Although Texas does not collect income tax from its citizens' income, taxation is one of the significant sources of income in the state. The types of taxes collected by Texas's state include excise tax, which comprises of taxes collected from specific products such as gasoline and tobacco, general sales taxes collected from items sold in retail, and ad valorem tax, which is the tax collected based on the value of a particular property. Of all types of taxes, sales taxes provide the highest revenue in Texas (Regalado). Other sources of revenue for the Texas state government include federal grants in aid, which comes from the federal government, borrowing, which is usually through bonds, revenue bonds, and general obligation bonds, and economic stabilization fund, which is a savings account that was set up for the state of Texas in 1990 for any surplus collections and previous budget (Regalado).

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The benefits of eliminating the income tax in a state are that it promotes growth, creates jobs, and retains a young and educated labor force. It is also a useful tool for wealth redistribution by enabling those who earn low incomes to have more disposable income, increasing savings and investments. However, states that do not have a state tax struggle to create new jobs to cater to all their new residents who migrate from other states and countries.

Why Creating a State Budget in Texas Is So Challenging and The Institutional Factors at Play

Creating a state budget in Texas has many restraining factors making it a challenging process. The budget is required to address and try to rectify increased government spending compared to the population growth rate and inflation. The budget is also required to properly allocate funds that usually are in surplus because of increased sales tax revenues.

Many institutional factors affect the creation of Texas's budget, including political involvement, social and demographic change, which includes changes in population, age distribution, personal income, economic influences, and legal and intergovernmental factors. The budget must accommodate all these very dynamic factors, making it very challenging for legislators.

Major Contributors to Texas Justice System Producing More Criminals Instead of Deterring Them

When criminals are injected into the Texas justice system to correct them, they may be breeding more criminals instead. This is because of the influence that inmates get from their colleagues while at prisons. People may be subjected to harsh experiences and bullying by other criminals in the prisons, making them develop a defense mechanism to become a more criminal person than they were.

The justice system is also overflowed with people more than it can hold. Therefore, it is difficult for it to effectively perform the required procedure to reform criminals into good people properly. This shows another reason that the justice system of Texas is being accused of producing more criminals instead of reforming them.

Politics Associated with Being a District Attorney in The State of Texas and Their Influences On How D.A.s Perform Their Job.

In Texas, for a person to qualify as a district attorney, they must go through an election process associated with many politics. These politics may result in a division of all the relevant stakeholders of this office into different groups depending on their political affiliation. People may be affiliated with candidates that have the same ideologies and focus as for them.

These political factors negatively influence the D.A.s on their performance because they must favor those who elected them. This influence makes the DA lack independence in making decisions, most of which are crucial. This may also make the DA not focus on what is better for the state because all their focus will on implementing their ideologies.

Future Issues and Challenges Associated with Transportation in Texas and Reasons Why Public Transportation Has Not Been Popular Therefore Underfunded

One of the Texas transportation system's challenges is the high growth rate of the population compared to the Texas state road capacity growth rate. This makes it difficult for the transport system to accommodate the state of Texas's colossal population adequately. Therefore, most Texas people have improvised other means of transport that are favorable to them, for example, the use of bicycles instead of cars.

Most people wo live in Texas find it difficult to use public transport because they find it time-consuming compared to private transport. This is because public transport may follow longer routes as compared to those who use private transportation. Due to many vehicles on the road, people opt to use other means of transport like bicycles to avoid traffic, especially when using public transport.

Factors That Shape the Process of Public Policy Identification and Formation

Ideologies are beliefs that are strong and are based on untestable assumptions. In the policy identification and formation process, legislatures are inclined to create policies inclined towards their ideologies. Therefore, this process is shaped according to the ideologies of legislatures. For example, if the legislatures are focused on ideologies that will generate more jobs, they will tend to formulate policies that mostly focus on providing favorable conditions for creating more jobs.

Administrative agencies and Private interest groups have come to be the primary initiators of policies. Legislative groups, together with private and administrative groups, are shapers of public policies (Dür). However, a group with a particular interest may shape public policy if they present their interests to merge with the public's attitude (Dür). The group also has access to major centers of determining policies.

Constituents may communicate their concerns to their representatives in the legislative groups responsible for shaping the policy identification and transformational process. This may make these representatives advocate for transformation and identification of policies that are in line with their constituents' interests. This shows that the concerns of constituents influence how public policy is shaped.

Works Cited

Dür, Andreas. "How Interest Groups Influence Public Opinion: Arguments Matter More than the Sources: HOW INTEREST GROUPS INFLUENCE PUBLIC OPINION." European Journal of Political Research, vol. 58, no. 2, 2019, pp. 514–535.

Miller, Andrea. "Living in States without State Income Tax: The Economic Benefits and Drawbacks." Solvable.Com, 2 Apr. 2019, https://www.solvable.com/tax-debt/living-in-states-without-state-income-tax-the-economic-benefits-and-drawbacks/.

Regalado, Daniel M. "Texas Budget and Revenue." Lumenlearning.Com, https://courses.lumenlearning.com/odessa-texasgovernment/chapter/budget-revenue/. Accessed 10 Dec. 2020.