Governor Lost in X-Rated Rabbit Hole
with Senate on Brink of Killing Tax Cut
Capitol Inside
June 26, 2023
The Texas Senate - barring a dramatic turnabout in the 11th hour - is on the verge of killing the largest state tax cut in the history of the planet Earth after four weeks of grandstanding in a special session that's been a historic drain on the same taxpayers that Governor Greg Abbott and lawmakers had promised to help.
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and his Senate allies plan to wag their fingers at GOP Speaker Dade Phelan, the House and Abbott when the event that he formally christened at the outset as "extraordinary session #1" ends no later than Tuesday with major unfinished business in a quest for property tax relief.
But the Senate has been no more than a stage for grandstanding at the taxpayers' expense with the House not even in session for the past four weeks. Patrick has demanded throughout the governor's extraordinary session that the lower chamber return to forge a tax plan that features a homestead exemption hike that Abbott has dismissed as ineffective.
The House adjourned at the end of the special session's first full day on May 30 after approving a rate compression that Abbott had endorsed the night before. That left the Senate with an ultimatum - to approve the $17.6 billion property tax cut that cleared the House, to vote it down or to allow it to die of neglect like Patrick has chosen do unless he's been bluffing all along.
The House - for the record - did its part to compromise when the Phelan team abandoned an appraisal cap provision that it embraced throughout the regular session. But Patrick has refused to let the Senate compromise by vowing to block any tax bill that doesn't include the homeowner breaks. That has been all the incentive that the speaker and a House that's united behind have needed to stay gone from Austin throughout the entre month of June up to now.
Abbott has appeared to be doing everything in his power to prolong the impasse on property tax relief after declaring it as the number one emergency facing lawmakers early this year. Abbott vetoed four dozen bills or more as designated targets of retaliation for the Senate holdout on taxes in a scheme that he cooked up to create the appearance of a leader using his powers in unprecedented fashion to compel a deal on taxes.
Instead of working overtime to bring the rival chambers together for a victory for the taxpayers at the finish line on Tuesday, Abbott spent the special session's final weekend in a X-rated rabbit hole on social media with tweets on a story in a major LGBTQ magazine in Washington D.C. and a Garth Brooks concert in Texas that never happened.
The article that Abbott took seriously and touted gleefully in a tweet was obvious satire - claiming that Brooks had been booed off the stage at the 123rd Annual Texas Country Music Jamboree at the famous Barron Cattle Empire ranch in the city of Hambriston. Abbott would discover that there is no such place in the state that he's led for nine years as a lifelong Texan.
Abbott may have confused the fictitious setting for the festival that made its debut in 1900 with the Cattle Baron's Ball that the American Cancer Society sponsors every in Dallas as a fundraiser. As a Dallas-area native, Abbott might be familiar with the Oil Baron's Ball that J.R. Ewing and his family attended on the television show. After signing a bill that banned sexually-explicit materials in public schools amid fears of gay and lesbian indoctrination attempts in libraries, Abbott had no problems circulating a story that quoted as fake Nashville mayor of warning that the Brooks concert in Texas would be swarmed with "leftists flashing fake breasts" in the audience.
"Go woke. Go broke," Abbott declared in a tweet that he deleted as soon as the mockery began. "Good job, Texas."
But neither Abbott, Patrick or Phelan have shown any recent interest in putting in the time and effort that it would take to negotiate a solution on property taxes. The extraordinary session has been an all-time waste as a consequence as an exercise in the legislative lollygag like no one at the statehouse in Austin has witnessed in modern times.
There would still be time to save it if the state's top three leaders were serious about cutting taxes.
more to come ... |
