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Gore Highlights Mismanagement of Texas Budget Surplus

In a visit to George W. Bush’s home state of Texas, Vice President Al Gore highlighted what he called a “gross mismanagement” of the state’s budget. Gore pointed out that Texas now ranks number one in the country for industrial pollution while it is number two for children living in poverty and number one for families without health insurance. Although Bush claims that Texans benefited from tax cuts, Gore says that special interest groups were the recipients of the majority of those cuts. Governor Bush made an attempt last year to push a $2 billion tax cut but when the state’s original prediction of a $6.4 billion surplus was reduced to only a $1.6 billion surplus, the tax cut had to be scaled back. State budget officials announced that Bush had in fact underestimated the potential Medicaid expenditures by about $610 million and they say the net surplus that Bush is predicting could be nonexistent by next year, leaving virtually little money to enroll the state’s 600,000 uninsured children in Medicaid programs.

Sources:

Washington Post - 21 July 2000

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