Dammit, Damn It, Sonofabitch

Politics prevails over probity

Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick cut deals and cast symbolic votes Wednesday to maintain party discipline and keep Democrats from making any major changes to a proposed $117 billion, two-year state budget.

The political cost to Craddick and the House Republican leadership was a deal with rebel Republicans that neuters legislation to dismantle the Robin Hood public school finance system in 2005.

[...]

Faced with a $10 billion shortfall in state tax revenue this year and the next two years, House budget writers have made deep cuts in state services, particularly in education and human services. Republicans have vowed to balance the budget without a tax increase.

Craddick and the GOP leadership have repeatedly fended off Democratic efforts to obtain more money for services for the poor and health care for children and teachers.

But on Wednesday, about 20 rural and some urban House Republicans threatened to join Democrats in voting to spend $1.2 billion in contingency money to increase financing for retired teacher and active school employee health care systems.

Craddick and the House Republican leadership want to use that money to lure school districts into supporting a bill to put a sunset deadline of August 2005 on the current public school financing system.

This is the inevitable outcome of any system which relies on a democratic process. A legislative change that rocks the boat (regardless of what ideology calls for it) is proposed, and those that can't live with the changes (regardless of their necessity or morality) band together to change or prevent them.

This is a demonstration of why allowing the government to exercise the kinds of powers it has is wrong. Humans are self-interested beings and choose their development, growth, and happiness over the alternative. When that self-interest is given political power, however, it leads to the corruption and abuse of that power. There has yet to be a human agency that felt it's budget should be cut or kept static. Likewise, since Texas has subsidized education for so long, reforming the system affects a huge swath of Texans and primarily the politically-sensitive disadvantaged groups like children, minorities, the disabled, etc.

It becomes harder and harder to change the system when so many have a stake in it. This is one of the reasons for not allowing such a system to be birthed in the first place. It becomes rooted in inertia, grows it's own irrational defensive mechanisms, and does what it can to expand it's power. Even worse, those who propose to change the system or try something else are routinely slandered as being "anti-" something, usually one of those perennially pitiful groups as listed above.

Posted by Drizzten at April 17, 2003 11:31 AM