Dateline: March 11, 2004

Comptroller says budget cuts cost Texas billions in funding

AUSTIN – Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn recently told the Mental Health Association in Texas that due to state budget cuts in Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance (CHIP), Texas is leaving an estimated $1.6 billion on the table in federal funds.

She made the announcement during a speech at the association’s 2004 Honoring Dinner where she was the recipient of the Texas Champion award.

Strayhorn said the federal money has been left on the table while, “107,000 children have been dropped from the CHIP rolls since last September 2003. That’s a 21 percent drop in five months, and Texas was already dead last in the percent of children without health insurance. That’s unconscionable.”

In the last regular legislative session, $41.2 million in state and federal funds were cut from the 2004 mental health budget, Strayhorn said. And Medicaid coverage for adults who need counselors and psychologists was eliminated entirely – up to 200,000 adults will lose these services, she said.

“All of the severe health cuts put together totaled more than $1 billion. We could have more than restored these cuts with a dollar tax increase on a pack of cigarettes – as I recommended during the last session. We would have brought in $1.5 billion this biennium with that tax increase. This administration is abdicating its responsibilities – and ignoring state challenges is creating local crises,” Strayhorn said.

Strayhorn estimates that a total of almost $583 million is available now to restore some severe cuts in health care and to fully restore all mental health services for children and fully restore Medicaid cuts for mental health services.

Of that total, there are $469.3 million that could be distributed by budget execution and another $113.4 million that could be appropriated in a special session.