Taxes are too high. That's because government spending is too high. I want to reduce both.
Today our state government spends money on almost everything: education, health care, cancer research, business incentives (i.e. corporate welfare), and poverty programs. These may be worthy goals, but they are not proper functions of government.
Steps I would take:
I would vote to repeal the business margins tax that was proposed and signed in 2006 by Republican Governor Rick Perry, and filed by Rep. Jim Keffer (Republican from Eastland).
I would file a bill to cut the state sales tax from 6.25% to 4%.
Those two tax reductions would reduce state revenue by about $25 billion over the next two years*. I propose cutting expenditures to match. (The current total budget is about $172 billion.) I support across-the-board cuts, and I note that most of the cuts will need to come from the two largest areas of state spending: education and health and human services.