Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Is That Because She Would?

Like to burn the country to the ground to start over as a white, fascist hell-hole, I mean.
"I would cut a whole lot more," she insisted. "I can name some agencies with three letters that I would cut right away, and I think they deserve it."

"We need to splinter it into a thousand pieces, not just the CIA... DOJ, yeah, they need to be ripped down, but then they need to be rebuilt correctly," she added.

Yeah, I think I understand what Chip Roy was getting at when he said that the more Biden refuses to meet House demands on the debt ceiling, the more he wants to raise the cost to refuse his demands.
That's how they would see "Washington" "rebuilt correctly." Sorta like this:
The original version of the bill had included allocating $4.5 billion in new funding for teacher pay raises and other budget expenses for schools. The House had rejected the voucher-like program, the Texas Tribune reported.

Democratic strategist Sawyer Hackett posted a copy of the revamped H.B. 100 on his Twitter account, saying it "strips money from public schools to fund private vouchers. But in the process of latching vouchers to the bill— they killed teacher pay raises and money for special education."

That fight is already going on in the local school district.  Local GOP State Senator (R-Gerrymander) is telling all who will listen that local school district is mismanaging their money, despite the fact the state agency in charge (TEA) has recognized same district for excellent financial management for over 20 years running.  The strategy is to blame schools for throwing money away without admitting that Texas has been taking local school taxes (which are supposed to stay local) away for 40 years, and using them to shore up the state budget.  Starving the schools, IOW, so they can claim to support "lower taxes!"

Interestingly, one of local state senator's talking points was the teacher pay raise (which would have made things worse, as the state would have funded it for one year, leaving school districts to fund it thereafter.  It was just another assault on public schools, IOW.), which is now gone the way of a snowball in July in Texas: barely even a memory.  The House refused the vouchers, so the Senate attached it to another bill at the last minute (regular session ends on Memorial Day, so it's sine die time!  Regularly understood as "sign or die!" because that's what happens to legislation now.)

He added: "Republicans in the Texas Senate passed a bill defunding public education."

He also pointed out that the vote "happened on the one-year anniversary of the massacre at Robb Elementary in Uvalde."

Local Fox4 News called the final bill "drastically different" than it was when it began. The report implied it was a last-minute, slap-dash effort to simply pass something.

The point all along has been to defund public education.  Why?  I have no idea.*  But it's the idee fixe of the Texas GOP, and I think of the GOP nationally (DeSantis wants to bring it soon to a school near you!).   Now it has to go back to the House and a compromise be hashed out by Monday.  

It's unclear whether this bill still provides an $8000 voucher per student, but the idea is clearly just to reward people who can afford private school anyway:

The new bill is only $3.8 billion with half a billion goes to private school vouchers.

According to the Private School Review, "the average private school tuition in Texas is $10,454 per year (2023). The private elementary school average tuition cost is $10,067 per year and the private high school average is $11,497 per year."

Abbott has been pushing this, as has Patrick (which is why the Senate keeps passing it, although one state Senator from Jacksonville, deep East Texas and very red, voted against this new version with the Democrats in the Senate (how'd they get in here?).  He's threatened a special session, but I don't think he'll pull that trigger if the House rejects this again (and I expect they will).  Rural voters aren't keen on vouchers (where do they spend money on private schools in towns where the only school is public, and a pillar of the community to boot?).  They dominate the House, in simplest terms.  Abbott could call a special session, which would only piss of the House members forced to show up in Austin for another 30 days (they have jobs; being a member of the Texas Lege doesn't pay shit).  Not exactly the way to win friends and influence people, in other words.  So my guess is Abbott will quietly let that threat pass, like he seems to have let the threat of a pardon for the Austin shooter, pass (he could still do it, but he's not making any noise about it, is he?).

Vouchers are a suck idea, and the clear aim is to defund public education (which they are doing anyway.  The schools and the state comptroller told the Lege the schools need an extra $1000 per student to keep up with inflation.  The Senate is giving them an extra $50.  We'll see how popular that is, since the budget has to be approved by sine die of the regular session.)  Killing vouchers is good; but it ain't near good enough.  And with the promised teachers' raises gone, I think the state GOP has its collective ass exposed to the wind.**

But we'll see....

*I'm sure there are "explanations."  I have no idea which one is the "real" one.

**They were going to buy off as many special interests (remember those?) as possible, and they failed to buy off anyone, despite a massive budget surplus.  Nothin' but good times ahead, right?

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