Is Texas facing a 25 percent budget shortfall?

It could be. Forget the $18 billion being bandied about. Gov. "Economic Miracle" (only by crony contracts that get unfulfilled) Rick Perry isn't necessarily telling the truth. It could be worse.

First, the bare background:

That central question of the state’s budget debate isn’t answered yet, at least officially. Estimates of the shortfall range from $11 billion on the low side to $25 billion on the high end. At issue is the difference between the comptroller’s assessment of how much money the state will bring in during the next two years, and the budget writers’ determination of how much money it will take to run the state in that same period.

$18 billion has been the normal number. $25 billion will be a lot worse. Bill White needs to run some last-minute ads on this.

But, then, an establishmentarian paper like the Times, perhaps kissing Tricky Rocky Gov. Helmethair's ass, says, "don't worry," so to speak. Or, so this could be read:

The actual shortfall number matters only for rhetorical purposes. The important thing is that it is somewhere between one in four and one in five of the state’s total discretionary dollars.

Well, there's a huge difference between $11 and $25 billion, and huge enough between $18 and $25 billion. The second sentence I agree with, on the percentages; but, percentages are just dollars, expressed differently, in this case, so it's poor writing at best and disingeneousness at worst to print that first sentence.

That said, there's also room for fudging in Texas, just like in California:

The budget writers’ number is a lot looser, because what you think the budget should be depends on what you think Texas should be doing. One idea is to figure the costs of the programs running now, assume they’ll continue to run pretty much the same way and adjust only for variables like population growth and the price tags of various state services, like paying for medical care. ... (I)t’s possible to hide $3 billion or so with tactics like delaying big payments from the end of one budget to the beginning of the next.

Speaker Joe Straus, and everybody else, especially GOP, swears "no new taxes," of course. That said, Texas has increased a number of **fees** in Helmethair's decade in power.

So, if it's a $25 billion shortfall, your next car registration could cost $100, perhaps. Your next driver's license $30. Your hunting license could go up another $10. Nothing "rhetorical" about that.

That said, Comptroller Susan Combs needs to tell us more before Nov. 2, or some staffer needs to leak. We as a state, and as a nation that could see this "confrontational cowboy" run for president in two years, can't afford to wait until December for more detailed budget information.