Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

The Republicans in the Texas House of Representatives have very little history of voting for tax bills, much less writing them. It would be almost comical watching them try to it if it weren’t so serious.

The Republicans on The Tom Craddick Crew, several elected with the help of money he shunted their way find him compelling them to vote in ways that could come back to haunt them.

In the Craddick-led House, in some kind of weird legislative hat trick, the recently passed House Bills 2 and 3 lower property taxes by raising the sales tax almost a penny and establishing a payroll tax.

The package also raises overall taxes for most Texans, lowers them for the wealthy, and puts only about enough uncommitted new money into schools to keep up with inflation.

Not just Democrats but several Republicans are blasting the payroll tax as a thinly disguised income tax. That’s a no-no in Texas without a majority vote of the people.

The school finance and tax bills are about as popular as smallpox with virtually every education group, and also are taking fire from both the right and left.

And infuriating the school folks, who also are elected, could bring legislators’ opponents with their own constituencies.

House Democrats, led by State Rep. Scott Hochberg of Houston, proposed to triple the $15,000 homestead exemption, and halve the property tax cut – dropping it from $1.50 per $100 valuation by 25 cents rather than the 50 cents called for in HB 2.

A chart showed the Democrats’ plan would allow greater average tax savings than the Craddick Crew’s plan for Texans with homes worth less than $164,000. It also would provide a lower average tax load in all but 14 of Texas’ 150 House districts.

Plus, Democrats proposed to put $2 billion more into schools than Craddick’s Crew’s.

But the Democratic alternatives were voted down, largely along party lines, with just a few GOP mavericks.
To understand the context, consider these facts about Texas:

It ranks 50th among the states in high school graduation rate, 48th in SAT scores, 45th in secondary school teachers with degrees in the subjects they teach, 39th in state aid per pupil, 32nd in average teacher salaries.

Texas ranks 1st in uninsured children, and 4th in the percentage of children living in poverty.

These statistics – gathered by the staff of State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, in a booklet entitled “Texas on the Brink” – also include that while the national high school dropout rate is 9.8 percent, in Texas it’s at least 38 percent for African-American students, 24 percent for whites, and 50 percent for Hispanics.

The Legislature in 2003 and 2004 “marked the passage from compassionate conservatism to just plain old mean spirit,” Shapleigh said in a letter accompanying his booklet.

He charged that “some public officials” – he didn’t mention Gov. Rick Perry, but could have -- “claimed that they had dealt with our budget shortfall in a way that ‘meets the basic needs of Texans,’ and had done so without raising taxes. In reality, our leaders made a choice to value tax cuts over kids, and budget cuts over the elderly. . .

“In 2003, Texas ranked 49th in state spending per capita and on tax revenue raised, with average state government spending nationwide 46 percent higher than Texas,” Shapleigh wrote. “The state’s rankings are the expected outcome of an inadequate, outdated and terribly regressive tax system, one that taxes those least able to pay the most.”

Shapleigh, with one of the state’s poorest districts, pays more attention than possibly any other senator to trying to get education and health care for those who truly need it and cannot afford it.

While the majority of the Republican-dominated Senate is unlikely to come up with enough taxes to make the investments in people that Democrat Shapleigh thinks are necessary, the expectation is that at least the Senate, with a bipartisan campaign to actually deal with the problem, will do a better job than the House.

Fortunately -- or unfortunately -- that’s a very low bar. Getting the improved bill back through the House, of course, is another matter.