Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to cut property taxes will starve public schools while he sends state money to private schools.
Gov. Greg Abbott won his campaign to give taxpayer money to private schools. Now he’s promising to starve public schools of the funds they need to compete.
The governor promised to push through laws to make it almost impossible for school districts to raise taxes. In announcing his run for a record fourth term, he also said voters should have the power to reduce or eliminate school funding entirely.
Abbott is aligning himself with the most reactionary members of his Republican Party. For decades, fringe conservatives have wanted to end government-run schools and send every child to private institutions run by clerics or ideologues under the banner of parental choice.
A couple weeks ago here in TX we voted on 17 state constitutional amendments. I want to say 12-13 of those were some form of tax cut for the wealthy. I voted against all of them but they all passed. And they passed big, like 60-70% to 40-30%.
The wording they used to describe the amendments was very much skewed to make them sound wonderful. No negatives, only positives. For instance, something like this may have had the wording “more money for schools”.
On its face it seems like a good idea - fewer taxes for me, more money for schools - what could go wrong? I assume most folks just looked at it said “ok” without much additional thought.
It’s very frustrating to basically have the large majority of voters approve this, giving the state government reassurance that they can do whatever they want, when it’s an obvious lie.
Nothing they do is to help the “regular” people of Texas. It’s all tax breaks for businesses and the super wealthy and Christian Nationalism disguised as “parental choice”.
It’s absolutely disgusting.
Yeah I voted no for every single one. I think part of the problem is barely anybody showed up to vote.
I posted about this a few weeks ago, it’s so frustrating seeing texas tax situation get more and more regressive.