The Fiscal Irresponsibility Of Texas Republicans

Waste, Walls, And Mismanagement: The truth about Texas Republicans' reckless spending.

The legislative budget board just added a fiscal note to the voucher scheme bill, HB1. This scheme is estimated to cost Texas taxpayers $25 billion over the next five years. It’s important to note that vouchers will only be available to 1% of Texas’ 5.5 million children.

It’s hard to contextualize how much money $1 billion is, let alone $25 billion. If you were to count one dollar per second, it would take you 32 years to count to $1 billion.

★Providing free and reduced breakfasts to every child in Texas would cost us less than $300 million annually.

This bill is awful and a wasteful use of our hard earned tax dollars. Over the last decade, we’ve seen a repeating pattern of wasteful spending by the Texas government on its culture war issues. Yet, all I hear from politicians, right-wing media, and the loudmouths that parrot them is how Democrats are not fiscally responsible.

That’s complete bullshit.

Here in Texas, where Republicans have been running the show for 20+ years, all we see is Republicans throwing money down the tubes because of whatever hot-button culture war issue is the topic of the moment.

As a result of the Republican Texas Government’s economic and social mismanagement:

• Over 6 million are uninsured.

• Over 4 million Texans live in poverty.

• The rate of child poverty is 20%.

• One out of every five children in Texas is hungry.

• 47% of Texas counties are in a maternity desert.

• Texas ranks as the 11^th most dangerous state in the nation.

• We top the list of worst states to live and work.

• The Lone Star State is number one for worst mental healthcare.

• Texas is ranked the 12th worst in the nation, with an obesity rate of 35.8%.

• In 2020, Texas had the highest number of forcible rape cases in the United States.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Let’s not even get started about the pollution and air quality or the terrible state of our water.

Let’s face it, Republicans are fucking bad economically and only care about culture issues. If we want a better government that works for the people instead of against them, we have to stop electing Republicans into office.

The narrative about Republicans being better for the bottom line is wrong, and it has to change.

★Expanding Medicaid in Texas would save us $50 million per year.

The Texas GOP’s $12 billion border scheme.

Earlier this week, the Texas Legislature gave Greg Abbott another $1.5 billion for 50 miles of border wall and passed a bill to raise your local property taxes significantly. SB4 does so many awful things besides racial profiling. It also demands that local law enforcement imprison undocumented persons. That means local jails, which are funded by property taxes.

Since its inception two years ago, Operation Lone Star has cost us $12 billion. Where has that got us?

• Migration to America has only increased.

• Texas is facing a myriad of civil rights lawsuits, which, in the end, may cost taxpayers billions.

• DPS officers and whistleblowers reported that they were instructed to murder children by pushing them into the Rio Grande.

• We’ve been locking migrants up for months at a time for misdemeanor trespassing and also paid for with our tax dollars.

• Abbott has militarized Hispanic border communities.

The GOP likes to talk about all of the fentanyl coming into the U.S., but 89% of the people arrested at the border for fentanyl are American Citizens. They complain about how people on the terrorist watch list are arrested. It’s good they were arrested. It means that CPB is doing its job.

Although Republicans have spent all of this money on walls and arresting people for trespassing, they never did one study on whether these measures are effective or even have an impact. They never researched ways to make an impact. They just threw money at the border.

★Tuition-free college would cost America $79 billion per year. Texas has 11% of the USA’s population, so our share would be $8.6 billion.

The GOP’s lie about “the biggest property tax cut ever.”

Earlier this year, Republicans had a special session… I think it might have been special session #1 or #2. They “passed the largest property tax cut in Texas history during that time.” But not really.

The $18 billion property tax-cut package is aimed at lowering school district property taxes, but it just temporarily buys down the tax rate. Meaning it’s not permanent. So, if your taxes are $1,000 less this year, next year, they’ll go back up to $1,000 unless they buy down the rate again next legislative session.

It was more like a temporary tax relief than a tax cut.

★Fully funding education would cost us several billions more yearly but drastically cut our property taxes.

Yet, Texas Republicans are so focused on the culture war that they would instead do temporary tax buy-downs every legislative session than make sure our schools were adequately funded.

It doesn’t matter that HB1 will waste billions of dollars. They’re only focused on getting vouchers to the 1%.

This bill is a handout to millionaires and billionaires so that Texas taxpayers can foot the bill for their kid’s private education. Yet, tomorrow House Republicans plan on debating it on the floor anyway.

You heard that right. The Legislative Budget Board put a $25 billion price tag on this bill, and the House still plans on pushing it through.

Call your House Rep and tell them to vote NO.

Don’t know who your House Rep is? Find out here.

If you want to live in a better world and a better state, stop electing Republicans.

★ Legalizing marijuana in Texas would bring in a revenue of nearly $3 billion.

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