Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

Debate rumbles on among senators
When a public official puts the word 'class' before 'envy' he or she is likely to generate headlines.

Such was the case when Sen. Robert Deuell (R-Greenville) used the phrase in an interview with San Antonio Express-News reporter Gary Scharrer last week. Deuell was asked to respond to comments made by Sen. Eliot Shapleigh (D-El Paso) for a story on border funding that ran on Monday.

"The whole story of the border is being told this session in the education and finance bills with the historic and regressive tax shift to lower- and middle-income Texas families," Shapleigh told Scharrer. "The border is disproportionately low- and middle-income Texans, so this session will go down historically as the transition from Robin Hood to robber baron."

That kind of rhetoric "doesn't solve the problem," Deuell told Scharrer. "Some of that really sounds like class envy."

By the time House and Senate Democrats held a press conference Thursday to urge a school finance conference committee to put more money into public education, Deuell's phrase had morphed into 'class warfare.'

"It's class warfare when you ignore the educational needs of most of our children in public schools who need more funding," said Sen. Rodney Ellis (D-Houston). "It's class warfare when you ignore the health care needs of the vast majority of the people of Texas, who are middle- and low-income."

Asked by QR if he knew which Senate colleague had started a debate on class, Ellis said he did not. He said he also did not realize that Deuell had used the phrase class envy not class warfare.

"Whoever the shoe fits, put it on," Ellis said. "Using the phrase class envy is just a refusal to discuss the issue. You go and grab a buzzword to get away from discussing the facts. It's a joke."

Deuell said he did not want to elaborate on the comments he gave Scharrer. "I just said I hope that it wasn't class envy but, no, I don't want to make any more comments," Deuell said. "I have always been available to the senators that have border issues, to try to help. You ask any of them. Whenever they have come to me about their issues, I have responded. I don't want to get sucked into a 'me versus them,' or 'us versus them' argument."

Scharrer's story was not the first time Deuell had used the term class envy. He used it on the Senate floor during the special session on school finance last year. Former state District Judge Scott McCown was testifying before the Committee of the Whole and was reminding senators that the 20th anniversary of the first Edgewood school finance lawsuit was coming up.

McCown, who presided over some of the court cases that led to Texas' Robin Hood school finance system, said the Senate should not place itself "on the wrong side of the historic struggle for equitable funding for Texas schools."

Deuell responded that he felt he was "getting lectured" on his constitutional obligations. Deuell said it was also the 40th anniversary of Barry Goldwater's "great" speech about liberals seeing a fat man as evidence that a thin man was going without.

"We're fighting that battle right now 40 years later. It's class envy. Liberals are good at it," Deuell said.

Shapleigh told QR it was not class envy to point out that the vast majority of Texans would end up paying more for less under both the House and Senate school finance plans.

"Property taxes go down a few cents," Shapleigh said. "Sales, car, beer, and business taxes go up. After the shift, ten percent at the top get tax cuts, 90 percent of the rest of us get tax hikes. And the school children of Texas get an IOU on equity. It's not class envy, it's class warfare and it's time middle- and low-income Texans said, 'Ya Basta,' (that's enough)."

Shapleigh said that for him, the "symbolic choice" on where the state was headed was made during the last regular session, when lawmakers voted to cut an inheritance tax for millionaires and give unelected regents the right to tax students.

"At the end, tax cuts in the amount of $322 million were delivered to millionaires and tax hikes in the sum of $263 were delivered to students. Is that the kind of tax system, tax choices and funding system we want for our future generations?" Shapleigh asked.

Deuell said he would continue to work with border lawmakers. "Whenever any of the senators have come to me about border issues, I have tried to help, with health care and all those issues," Deuell told QR. "I will continue to keep an open mind. I share their concerns about the border areas."

ã Copyright May 20, 2005 by Harvey Kronberg, www.quorumreport.com, All rights are reserved