Via Paul Krugman, here's the latest development out of Texas:
Legislature likely to cut deep to meet possible $25 billion budget gap
Texas faces a budget crisis of truly daunting proportions, with lawmakers likely to cut sacrosanct programs such as education for the first time in memory and to lay off hundreds if not thousands of state workers and public university employees.
Texas' GOP leaders, their eyes on the Nov. 2 election, have played down the problem's size, even as the hole in the next two-year cycle has grown in recent weeks to as much as $24 billion to $25 billion. That's about 25 percent of current spending.
The gap is now proportionately larger than the deficit California recently closed with cuts and fee increases, its fourth dose of budget misery since September 2008.
Wait, weren't conservatives arguing that the Texas experience proves conservatives know how to manage governments better than the "coastal elites" in states like California? And now they're looking at a bigger budget gap in percentage terms than California?
Naturally, I guess this means it's a perfect time for Texas conservatives to start debating whether they can secede from Social Security and Medicare. Why stop now when they've already screwed up this much already?