AUSTIN (AP) -- A 10.7 billion dollar budget surplus predicted this week by Comptroller Susan Combs set Texas Capitol-tongues awagging with plans for tax rebates.
But the surplus is actually about two billion dollars.
The Associated Press reports 5.7 billion is for the state's Rainy Day Fund and can't be touched without a super-majority approval from each chamber of the Legislature.
Another three billion dollars of the Combs estimate is constitutionally dedicated to pay for property tax cuts approved last year. That money can't be touched either.
While two billion dollars still sounds like a lot of money, consider this: The state will have to pay for an estimated 160,000 new students expected to enroll in the public school system since the last budget was written.
AP reports that could eat up about half of the remaining surplus. Add to that inflation, growing costs and enrollment in federal entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid and hundreds of other priorities that will come up in the 2009 Legislature.
According to numbers to be released Friday, state sales tax returns for the month of April were down 1.8 percent from the previous April. That marks the first decline in years.
