Texas falls short

It’s Memorial Day. Like many, I spent it with family – local members being my daughter, her Uncle Sam’s Misguided Child husband, and a couple of my favorite grandchildren. OK, they’re all favorites, but these two are the youngest and localest. After dinner and a swim, on to vege out a bit. Just finished “Mister Roberts” and starting “Von Ryan’s Express”, two good roles for two actors I was not terribly fond of. But both deal in their own ways with taking care of the troops, or sailors as the case may be, who do the work.

And then I get to the news out of Texas: the Senate adjourned without action on a bill to provide financial help for Guard members whose pay was screwed up by Texas when deployed to the border.  A simple matter, really: to change Texas state and US Army norms, Texas paid the Guard twice a month – but only withheld taxes once a month. At the end of the year the men found they were an average of $867.29 short on taxes withheld. House Bill 3031 would provide up to $6 million of the $9 million total shortfall.

HB 3031, however, was not voted upon before a Wednesday deadline for action by the Senate.

The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the House with only 17 days remaining in a regular session that ends Monday.

The Senate received the bill one day before its Veteran Affairs Committee had its last meeting and with the meeting’s agenda already set. The bill faced another obstacle when no senator agreed to sponsor it in the upper chamber.

The tax issue, first reported by The Texas Tribune and the Military Times in October, stems from a problem with the state payroll system, which was not set up to properly process payments for National Guard troops on state duty. In September 2021, Abbott ramped up the scale of Operation Lone Star, at one point boasting that 10,000 troops were deployed on the mission. The tax withholding issues began the following month.

Texas Tribune

So Texas has been aware of the issue since October 2021, and didn’t take any substantive action till mid-2023 – and then couldn’t move a bill ACROSS THE HALL between Houses of the legislature in two and a half weeks, nor find a State Senator to sponsor it. It is worth noting that the Lege (as gadfly Molly Ivins famously called it) meets semi-annually so once adjourned, they will not be back this year – or next unless a special session is called.

A lot of people viewed that deployment as a political stunt to bolster Governor Abbott’s Presidential hopes; seems counterproductive to hang the folks who had to do the work out to dry for two years.

Category: "The Floggings Will Continue Until Morale Improves", Border, The Stupid is Strong