Perry’s tax cuts
It’s an open secret our ambitious governor wants them. Texans will pay the price.
The urgency bordering on panic to squeeze a tax break for Texas businesses into the state’s 2013 biennial budget with mere days left in the regular session is more sorry and silly than it is mysterious.
As they say up in the Panhandle, this is Pure-D politics, Rick Perrystyle. The open secret is that Gov. Perry wants this tax break to pad his resume for a presidential run in 2016.
And so, this one’s for you, 2016 GOP primary voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. Ordinary Texans be damned.
After three legislative sessions, Perry’s act is getting old, and serious-minded Republicans in Austin understand that as well as do Democrats.
The governor has threatened to veto any budget that doesn’t give him his way on the cuts for business. Some lawmakers have tried to trim them back from the original $1.6 billion proposed by the governor, but several hundred million are expected to be approved.
The cuts come as the state continues to underfund public education and is having difficulties financing water infrastructure and road construction.
Why do this governor’s presidential ambitions for 2016 get to cut line ahead of those priorities? For that matter, why is the man himself blind to the obvious?
Ego. Self-interest. Unbridled ambition. Take your pick.
What makes matters more problematic this session is the enormous uncertainty hanging over lawmakers as they await a ruling on education funding by the Texas Supreme Court.
The suit, brought by about 600 of the state’s property-poor districts, argues that there are inequities in funding that must be addressed. Agreement on this point by a majority of the state Supreme Court justices could knock the state budget into a cocked hat.
We side with informed critics who identify as priorities more generous education funding and planning for adequate water resources to meet expected population growth.
If it matters in the least to our tax cut-obsessed governor, better-