preview

Texas Government

Better Essays

Texas is the second most populous state as well as the second largest state in the United States of America (Brown, Langenegger, Garcia, Lewis, & Biles, 2014). With a huge number of people currently calling Texas their home, it would make sense to draw the conclusion that the Texas government must make this state a great place to live by serving its citizens to the best of its abilities. However, it is best not to make assumptions and in order to ascertain whether the local government actually fulfills this role we must look at multiple aspects of the government. To assess how well the government of Texas meets the needs of its citizens we first must look at the document that delegates power to the state government and outlines the rules …show more content…

This is an area where public opinion and public policy match in that they both heavily favor regressive taxation (Brown et al., 2014). Tausanovitch and Warshaw (2013) have developed a means of understanding political preference in comparison with public opinion and public policy to determine whether a government is best serving the desires of its people. This type of tool would be very useful for the state of Texas to use to determine whether the government is serving the desires of its constituents. But, just because public opinion and public policy line up doesn’t mean that the interests of citizens are best served because some groups may still be left out and those groups may have more needs than others. Texas’ current operational stance of “pay-as-you-go” makes for a very tight budget where the government cannot always afford to spend money on things the citizens of Texas may need. For instance, Texas operates its roads with the same “pay-as-you-go” mentality by opting for toll roads (Brown et al., 2014). Toll roads receive some government funding through state issued bonds and the collection of tolls after completion. This system is hardly fair for the citizens who do not use the toll roads but still must subsidize them through taxpayer dollars when the toll revenue does not meet the projected earnings. There are also many more citizens in Texas who live below the poverty line, 18.4% for Texas in comparison to 15.1% for the entire United States (Brown et al., 2014). With a larger proportion of citizens in poverty the burden to the state becomes greater, especially when funding remains low (Insert citation). Texas is just hurting its citizens by not being able to provide as much support and assistance to them as possible. Texas was given the opportunity, along with every other state in the union, to expand its offering of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. A sample of public opinion was obtained

Get Access