Thanks to a healthy economy, Texas comptroller bumps revenue estimate by $2.8 billion

[TexasTowelie]

Edgar Walters, Texas Tribune


If Comptroller Glenn Hegar’s latest revenue estimate is to be believed, Texas budget writers awoke Wednesday morning to a $2.8 billion present.

Thanks to Texans’ ravenous purchasing appetite — and all the sales tax dollars collected on those purchases — the state has seen bigger revenue growth in 2018 than officials predicted last year.

With help from rising oil prices and production, state lawmakers are on track to have more than $110 billion to spend on the two-year budget, according to the comptroller. That’s an upward revision of about 2.6 percent from the roughly $107 billion Hegar estimated in October, meaning lawmakers could have nearly $3 billion more to work with next year.

That forecasted revenue could go a long way toward plugging some of the huge holes that have worried lawmakers since they signed off on their last two-year budget at the end of the 2017 legislative session, such as a $2 billion underfunding of the Medicaid program for the poor and disabled, a $2.5 billion annual commitment to the state highway fund and the continued costs of Hurricane Harvey recovery.

Read more: https://www.texastribune.org/2018/07/11/texas-comptroller-bumps-revenue-estimate-28-billion/

Nothing amazing happening here since they typically lowball the initial revenue estimates.

[Sophia4]

1. We shall see.

Will tax revenue rise? By how much?

If the economy is really doing well, tax revenues should rise really high.

Will my Social Security payment rise?

That's the real test.