Even Texas, which had been weathering the downturn, faces a gap that lawmakers say could top $21 billion over the next two years.
But the $1.9 billion in net revenue to be generated by the tax bracket changes will go a long way toward easing the projected budget gap that lawmakers will face when they return to Albany in January.
The overhaul, which creates a new tax bracket for the highest-income residents while reducing the rate for millions of others, will generate enough revenue to nearly halve the budget gap that lawmakers expected to confront in January.
The toll and fare increases, though, will close only part of the financing gap, so lawmakers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are expected to wrestle with the thornier problem of how to pay for long-term transportation needs.
To debate: At the Washington Post, Peter Whoriskey takes a closer look at the widening wealth gap between lawmakers and constituents in the U.S. To view: The twenty most popular Reddit pictures of 2011.
That gap between lawmakers' calls to blindly increase spending at DoD versus those of internal auditors to curtail its waste isn't a new problem, and it's one that, without pressure, won't be resolved any time soon.
That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress -- 250 in all -- and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a "millionaire's tax".
State Senator Jane Nelson, Republican of Flower Mound, who chaired a committee in the 2011 legislative session aimed at cutting Medicaid costs to help close the state's budget gap, said lawmakers "need to understand why we are seeing such a prevalence of these surgeries, especially in light of the rampant abuse of the system across the state".
