A Government of Pygmies
The stature of the Texas Legislature shrinks with every session

John Adams warned long ago that there never was a democracy that didn’t commit suicide. This week the state House put the gun to Texas’ head. Whether the Texas Senate will pull the trigger is still an open question.

The finance bill passed by the House shuffles the array of taxes available to the state like a deck of cards. It adds a few dollars to public education, but then promptly adds mandates on how school districts are required to spend it. In all, it is “revenue neutral.” That is another way of saying it provides no new money.

For a moment, let’s pass over what this means to the Highland Park schools. (And it means nothing good.) Let’s see what it means to the state of Texas.

First, a few unpleasant facts. In just 10 years, Anglos will be a minority in North Texas. In North Texas. We already have the highest rate of teens giving birth in the nation. We rank second among states for child abuse, 43rd for children born into poverty, and 45th in the number of kids who graduate from high school.

If those social problems correlate to poverty, they can do nothing but get worse. Median household income — which has risen every decade since Texas was a republic — is expected to drop two percentage points a decade for the next 40 years.

At the same time, Dallas-Fort Worth will grow 55 percent, from 5.3 million to 8 million over the next 10 years.

What kind of picture does this paint?

What about this picture — huge growth, a less educated workforce, declining household income — does the Legislature not understand?

There are two good aspects to the House’s finance bill. The first is that it replaces the franchise tax, which only one out of six businesses was required to pay, with a payroll tax that all businesses will be required to pay. That is a reform that was long overdue. The second is that it caps property tax recapture under Robin Hood.

But that’s all it does. It does not address, it does not even attempt to address, the real problem.

The real problem is not money. Money is a tool. The real problem is mediocrity.

Robin Hood — take from the “rich” and give to the “poor” — was the liberals’ answer to school finance, and like the socialism it emulates, its end result was to discourage excellence and to flatten education to a level aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Now conservatives are in charge. The House has already shown what a difference this makes — none. Now the Texas Senate says it will do better. Its solution — apparently a majority have already signed on to it — is a statewide property tax to replace local taxes. And what will the end result of that be? To discourage excellence and flatten education to the lowest common denominator.

Is this problem so difficult? Is it so impossible?

Ronald Reagan wouldn’t have thought so. He saw Communism as an evil, and set out to demolish it — and he did. Rudy Guiliani saw dirty, crime-ridden New York City as a jewel, and set out to restore it — and he did. George Bush saw the Arab world as a people yearning for freedom, and set out to unleash it — and he did.

These men are giants because they saw things other people didn’t see.

Any pygmy can become a giant by standing on the nearest rock. What we need in Texas is a Republican leader willing to look around for one.