A Biblical Critique of the 2026-27 Texas Budget

Commandeering Private Property Through Taxation and Spending Won't Deliver Prosperity or Liberty to Most Texans

Texans for Fiscal Responsibility’s series on Ten Reasons Republicans Should Vote Against the Texas Budget continues today with Reason #2, Why the Texas Budget Belongs in California, Not Texas. The discussion about the Texas budget in this article supplements those in the Ten Reasons Series to provide a scriptural foundation for opposing the taxing and spending policies of the Texas Legislature.

Commandeering the Free Market Through the Texas Budget

When the federal government attempts to take over an industry we usually hear a lot about it; especially when Democrats are doing it. ObamaCare is perhaps the most well-known example in recent years.

However, when it happens at the state government level, we often hear little about it; especially in conservative states like Texas when Republicans are leading the way. In one way this makes sense because people tend to pay less attention to state politics than federal politics. Yet the harm done to the economy, property rights, and liberty is no less severe.

Texas government is leading the way nationally when it comes to the takeover of various sectors of the market. Electricity, water, healthcare, filmmaking, and title insurance are several sectors of the state economy that Texas politicians have been unwilling to keep their hands off in recent years. One of the primary ways these assaults on the market have been carried out is through the Texas budget.

The Texas Legislature’s commandeering of the previously highly competitive Texas electricity market has been extremely expensive for Texans. Since 2006, the Legislature has provided more than $19 billion in subsidies and benefits to renewable energy generators that were paid for by Texans. When the inevitable rapid growth of renewables started to break the Texas grid in 2013, the Legislature attempted to fix the problem they created by making Texans pay for more than $60 billion in subsidies to thermal generation, i.e., natural gas, nuclear, and coal. Most of this was done by the Public Utility Commission of Texas through increasing the price that consumers paid for electricity.

In the last two years, however, the Texas Legislature has added more subsidies for thermal generators in the Texas budget. In 2023, the Legislature used part of the record $33 billion budget surplus to create the Texas Energy Fund with $5 billion of taxpayer money to subsidize natural gas generators. This year, the Legislature’s proposed 2026-27 budget contains another $5 billion for the natural gas generators plus $750 million that will go into the newly created Nuclear Energy Fund.

Add it all up, and Texans are out over $90 billion since 2006. Meanwhile, the cost of electricity in Texas is the highest it has ever been while the reliability of the grid is at a record low.

Healthcare has also recently been the focus of the Legislature. In 2007, it created the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas and funded it with $3 billion. In 2019, it added another $3 billion. This session, the Legislature is creating the Dementia Institute and has put $3 billion in the budget for it.

The Legislature, it seems, also wants to make Texas like Hollywood. Since 2005, taxpayers have paid for about $100 million in subsidies for filmmakers. This was supposedly for the economic development purpose of building up a film industry in Texas, but it has not worked; filmmakers generally take their subsidies and go back home. This failure has not stopped the Legislature though from committing $2.5 billion for the film industry this session, with $500 million of that in the 2026-27 budget.

There is also $2.5 billion for the Texas Water Fund in the 2026-27 budget, which already received $1 billion in 2023. Then there was the $1.5 billion the Texas Broadband Infrastructure Fund received last session. If there is a need in the Texas economy, it appears the Texas Legislature is ready to provide the solution with our money.

Private Property vs. Socialism in the Texas Budget

Most Republicans are well known for their advocacy of free markets and private property. Ronald Reagan once said, “We who live in free market societies believe that growth, prosperity and, ultimately, human fulfillment are created from the bottom up, not the government down.” Unfortunately, Reagan’s quote highlights the disconnect in Texas today between what a number of Republicans say about markets and how they govern.

Free markets are grounded in private property. People using their own property to participate in the market—whether as producers or consumers—provide by far the most efficient means of creating wealth for everyone.

However, when politicians decide how to use other people’s money the system brakes down; some people get very wealthy, but most fall behind. There is a name for the government taking control of the means of production in this way: socialism.

This begs the question: Why is socialism’s abolition of private property such a bad thing? William Blackstone, in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, helps us understand the problem:

There is nothing which so generally strikes the imagination, and engages the affections of mankind, as the right of property; or that sole and despotic dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in total exclusion of the right of any other individual in the universe. And yet there are very few, that will give themselves the trouble to consider the original and foundation of this right. …

In the beginning of the world, we are informed by holy writ, the all-bountiful creator gave to man “dominion over all the earth; and over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.” This is the only true and solid foundation of man’s dominion over external things, whatever airy metaphysical notions may have been started by fanciful writers upon this subject. The earth, therefore, and all things therein, are the general property of all mankind, exclusive of other beings, from the immediate gift of the Creator.

Blackstone points to a major problem with socialism: it stands opposed to God’s design for how the world is supposed to work. Private property is both the most ethical and efficient way to create, sustain, and increase wealth for the simple reason that it is the means that God gave us for doing so. Socialism simply doesn’t work very well and the consequences to humanity are very harmful.

However, an even more fundamental problem with socialism is that it seeks to enthrone the State, rather than God, as the Ultimate Authority in this world. As the state becomes all things to all people—providing for education, energy, healthcare, jobs, and retirement, God is no longer needed. This is exactly what the people tried to do in the biblical account of Babel (Genesis 11:1-9):

When we grasp the true intention of the human city builders [of Babel], it is clear that their project is not as innocent as it may first seem. On the contrary, what we have here is an account in which all the God-given abilities of human beings are deliberately focused on creating a society where God is redundant. Confident in their own capacity to meet every challenge, the inhabitants of this human city view the Creator as irrelevant. (Desmond, Alexander: From Eden to the New Jerusalem)

Three Ways the 2026-27 Texas Budget Undermines the God-given Roles of Humans

How the Texas Budget Distorts the Image of God in Man

“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness.’” – Genesis 1:26

“Then he said to them, ‘Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.’ When they heard it, they marveled. And they left him and went away.” – Matthew 22:21–22

Of course, Caesar is now dead, and his image is no longer on our money. But that doesn’t mean that Jesus’ instructions have no meaning for us today.

George Washington’s image is on our money, which reminds us that we do have an obligation to pay taxes. But this does not mean the power to tax is unlimited. The government has no right to tax us until all, or even most, of our Caesar money is gone. As government continues to take our money to do more than secure our unalienable, God-given rights, it is attempting to twist Jesus’ words and implant its image on us so that we owe everything to Caesar and nothing to God. This is why early Christians were persecuted; they refused to acknowledge Caesar as Lord.

Texans must similarly rebuff the deification of the state today. When we are being taxed so that the government is spending money on efforts to supplant the image of God in man with the image of Caesar, we must fight back. Public education is the most widespread example of this; our children are told throughout their years of public education that God is irrelevant when it comes to geology, biology, mathematics, language, economics, and most other things.

Increased taxes and government spending are the means through which the government seeks to undermine the many gifts and talents we have because we are created in God’s image. We should seek to honor the image of God which we bear by reducing both taxes and government spending.

How the Texas Budget Disrupts the Fruit of the Labor of Our Hands

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.” – Genesis 2:15 ESV

“Blessed is everyone who fears the LORD, who walks in his ways! You shall eat the fruit of the labor of your hands; you shall be blessed, and it shall be well with you.” – Psalm 128:1–2: ESV

God created humans to work. However, as the Texas budget grows to fund subsidies, regulations, and welfare, our state and local governments deny us opportunities to work. In this way, they also deny us the blessings of work as we no longer eat the fruit of the labor of our hands, but of someone else’s.

Consider the plight of many black teenagers. Trapped in a cycle of poverty through welfare, relegated to failing public schools, and with limited employment opportunities because of the minimum wage, heavy regulation and high taxes on businesses, and unchecked immigration, black teenagers have an unemployment rate of 19.6%, more than four times the 4.2% national unemployment rate.

But black teens are not the only ones who are harmed through government policies; the unemployment rate for white teens is 11.6%. More than this, the country’s 4.2% unemployment rate understates the lost opportunities to work for many Americans. The rate is so low because many Americans have simply given up looking for work; the labor force participation rate has fallen from 66.4% in 2003 to 62.6% today.

Both unemployment and underemployment can also interfere with our relationship with God and our fear of Him. As can much government work and government-funded and supported work that is in opposition to God’s plans for how government and the economy are supposed to operate. Texas’ oversized government and rapidly increasing budget is not good for us and our walk with God.

How the Texas Budget Interferes with Our Work of Being Fruitful and Multiplying and Filling the Earth

“And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.’” – Genesis 1:28 ESV

“And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God.’” – Revelation 21:3 ESV

A lot of people are familiar with Genesis 1:28, which is often called the “cultural mandate.” It may be, though, that many of us don’t spend much time reflecting on exactly why we are to fill the earth, subdue it, and have dominion over it. Yet we should consider this. What, we might ask, is the purpose of the awesome accomplishments of human civilization such as cities, roads, homes, farms, factories?

Both Genesis and Revelation can help give us some perspective on this question. Alexander Desmond provides his thoughts:

Interpreted along these lines, the opening chapters of Genesis enable us to reconstruct God’s blueprint for the earth. God intends that the world should become his dwelling place. Remarkably, this blueprint is eventually brought to completion through the New Jerusalem envisaged in Revelation 21 – 22.

Just like the garden was the dwelling place of God with man, we are building a civilization and cultivating the earth to prepare the entire world as the dwelling place of God with man for eternity. However, because of sin and scarcity, our effort to fill the world so that we can live here with God raises the question: How can we fill the earth with enough people to subdue it without starving to death or killing each other?

Sin means that we are always going to be troubled with violence. But if we can have enough food to feed everyone, enough clothes to clothe everyone, and enough shelter to shelter everyone so that we can live in relative prosperity, that will certainly help reduce the violence. How do we do that, though?

The good news is that God in His wisdom did not leave us helpless along these lines. He gave us private property as the most efficient way to increase and allocate the labor and resources needed to keep us alive and well. This is the big problem with the ever-expanding Texas budget. As it continues to undermine the institution of private property, it will also undermine our ability to provide for ourselves and the world’s growing population.

There was an event in the Bible, when people sold all they had and gave it to the church and others, that some people have called socialism: “And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:45 ESV). But this was not socialism, it was charity, voluntary gifts from the proceeds of selling private property to benefit others, which we might describe as coming from an attitude of “All Mine is Yours.”

However, the socialism on the rise in the Texas budget today might be described as coming from an attitude of “All Yours is Mine.” In Texas today, property is increasingly no longer private; instead, it is taken from one person and given to another either physically or through regulation or taxation. This forced redistribution of wealth is, of course, an ethical and moral problem—theft. But it also becomes an economic efficiency problem. When God’s design for economic activity is disrupted, so is His plan for increasing our wealth. Not only does wealth decrease under socialism, but strife between people will increase as more people fight over fewer goods and services.

Conclusion

Socialism is a natural consequence of sin, and many well-meaning Texans do not recognize socialism when they see it or understand that the rapidly expanding Texas budget interferes with God’s design for how humanity is supposed to thrive economically and spiritually.

There are two paths forward to reversing the growth of the Texas budget. One is to use political science, economics, long-standing conservative principles, and simple math to explain to Texas the problem with the rapidly growing Texas budget. The other is to apply the whole counsel of God in the Bible to the public policy challenges we face today.

Both are necessary. To eliminate socialism from the Texas budget, we need to change the minds of Texans to help them see its folly. But changing the minds of Texans also requires a change of hearts. And that requires the Word of God.