Don't Tax, We Spend

In some ways, it's reminiscent of the 1980s, when competing black Democrats, some who couldn't stand one another, got in elbowing matches to stand closest to black presidential candidate Jesse Jackson.

Now U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has signed an anti-tax pledge at the state level. She says she signed a similar pledge at the federal level long ago. The new pledge came just after her fellow Republican, Gov. Rick Perry, whose job Hutchison wants, said Grover Norquist was coming to Texas to campaign with him.

Norquist is president of the anti-tax group Americans for Tax Reform. He once said "My goal is to cut government in half in 25 years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Hundreds of lawmakers, mostly Republicans, have taken Norquist's pledge to "oppose and vote against any and all efforts to increase taxes."

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In a recent column, Shapleigh laid much of the blame for Texas' problems on Perry channeling Norquist and how that is playing out in the Republican gubernatorial primary.

"When the extreme wing of the Republican Party values tax cuts for the wealthy over good schools for our children, Texas loses," Shapleigh wrote. "Good government is of, by, and for people - and those irresponsible few who seek to starve government are really starving us."

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Texas, Shapleigh said, ranks 46th in Scholastic Aptitude Test scores and dead last in the percentage of the population 25 and older with a high school diploma. Only 64 percent of ninth-graders graduate from high school within four years, and only 35 percent enter college, Shapleigh said.

Even the Governor's Select Commission on Higher Education and Global Competitiveness, appointed by Perry, said Texas is badly lagging in developing an educated workforce, the senator noted.

"Texas is not globally competitive," the commission flatly declared in a January report. "The state faces a downward spiral in both quality of life and economic competitiveness if it fails to educate more of its growing population (both young and adults) to higher levels of attainment, knowledge, and skills. The rate at which educational capital is currently being developed is woefully inadequate."


Excerpts from Fortworth Weekly story at: http://www.fwweekly.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2107:dont-tax-we-spend&catid=3:second-thought&Itemid=374