How to Steal From the Poor & Middle Class

Save Texas Reps ? Republicans Use Shenanigans to Steal From Poor

A couple of strands of thought that ought to be tied together as Democrats ponder the GOP's still unresolved dilemna on how to tax Texans. As Nathan points out here, Rick Perry didn't call a special election to replace Joe Moreno in the special session ... just that he'd be replaced in November. That was an effective way to trim the Dem votes by one. Especially when he must have had a clue that he'd be calling a special session unless he just happened to wake up the day after calling the November election and conclude he needed the extra session despite the absence of the very concensus he claimed as a prerequisite to calling.

Then, I'm reminded of this quote on the passage of the biggest tax hike to hit Texans:

Eiland said he thinks if he had been present Wednesday, Craddick would have delayed the vote until some of the Republican opponents to the tax bill could have been persuaded to change their votes.

There's a good deal to support this claim and it should be no mistake that both the second reading and the third, final, reading passed by one vote. If it weren't for the death of Joe Moreno, Speaker Craddick would have just chosen another GOP House member to bribe/threaten. If he couldn't get away with the "ghost vote" his team tried to cast for two absent Dems, he just moved on down the list to two other GOP or Craddick-Dems that he could harass for a switch. That "one vote float" is something that any enterprising Texas journalist would be wise to look at more closely as we get into the back nine of this special session. Gardner Selby, are you reading this? RG Ratcliffe, are you reading this? Tom Burka, are you reading this? There's a story there for the taking ... how is Speaker Craddick able to get that one vote float so faithfully? What is he offering in exchange? What is he threatening them with? That one-vote margin doesn't just happen by accident, ya know. Somewhere, there's a great story if a professional reporter wants to cover it.

Another matter, more pertinent to the merits of HB3 are as follows ... this was supposed to be a revenue-neutral bill, right? So if, as the bill's author and supporters claim, this is the biggest tax relief for Texas homeowners, then isn't the inverse true: that this represents the biggest tax hikes on the rest of Texans?

The question came up on the floor in a colloquoy between State Reps Scott Hochberg and (IIRC) Pat Haggerty from El Paso. Haggerty posed that very question to Scott (both of these Reps oppose HB3), and Scott's response was that while he was originally prepared to make that point in his speech, he wasn't mathematically certain that this represented THE biggest tax hike in the state ... but it certainly represents ONE OF the biggest.

Small consolation, I suppose, for big-government Republicans.

What will be worth watching now, is what consensus evolves from a House-backed plan that I'll go ahead and call it, the biggest tax hike in the history of Texas ... and the Senate side, which wants to impose a back-door income tax on Texans? In short, which promise will Texas Republicans break: their opposition to an income tax, or their opposition to higher taxes? And how will Grover Norquist spin this so he can avoid losing Rick Perry as another tax-hiking Republican (which seems to be in vogue based on Grover's ex-fave Governor in Colorado).