Opinion: Plan Puts Cuts Above Children's Programs

State Sen. Eliot Shapleigh

Special to the San Angelo Standard Times
6/8/2006

The tax proposals passed this special session continue the 10-year pattern in both Washington, D.C., and Austin of the ''Great Texas Tax Shift,'' in which the wealthiest Texans' taxes are shifted onto the backs of middle- and low-income families, and budgets for key programs like the Children's Health Insurance Program, college loans and public education get cut.

The total tax relief in Gov. Rick Perry's tax plan for those who make less than $54,000 is zero. In fact, those Texas families will pay $7 million more in net taxes. For Texans who make more than $100,000, their taxes are cut a total of $920 million. The governor's priorities are clear: tax cuts over kids.

After 10 years of the George W. Bush era in Texas and six in the nation's capital, we now know the pattern: tax cuts for the wealthy few, budget cuts for you and deficits as far as we can see. During this era, Republicans have worked every session to shift taxes from wealth to work, from the rich to the middle class.

How does this work? Under Bush and Perry tax plans, wealthy donors get big tax cuts, middle-class families get the price of a tank of gas, then the resulting cuts to budgets destroy programs like CHIP that benefit millions of working Texans.

In 2003, Republicans balanced the state budget on the backs of children by cutting CHIP, Medicaid and after-school programs. As of this April, more than 213,000 children have been kicked out of CHIP. Texas already had the highest rate of uninsured children in the U.S. with 21 percent lacking health care coverage - dramatically higher than the national rate of 12 percent.

The result of the tax shift and program cuts is that income has steadily become concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. Texas started the 21st Century with the greatest income inequality in the nation between the richest 20 percent of income earners and the middle 20 percent.

The Texas model has moved to D.C., where Congress recently agreed on and voted out a tax cut package that overwhelmingly favors the wealthy.

In today's politics of the right, tax cuts are valued over children and budget cuts are valued over good teachers. After a decade of right-wing leaders, Texas ranks 50th among the states for high school graduation rates and 48th in the country in SAT scores, and Texas' per-pupil expenditures recently dropped from 35th to 38th in the nation.

If we as a free people do not rise to elect leadership to meet the challenges of educating our children and investing in our future, for the first time in Texas history, we face a tomorrow less prosperous than today.

Shapleigh, a Democrat from El Paso, has served in the Legislature since 1997.