Texas Lege Failures 2023

The regular session of the Texas legislature is over and has left the citizens with important work undone. Instead of focusing on improving our state by raising teacher pay and adequately funding public education too much time and energy was spent on making life more difficult for very small number of teens who see themselves differently than most. Texas classrooms have too many students per class and often too many classes to teach while they are underpaid. Consider that many of teachers with 20 years of experience earn less than most new college graduates.

Gov. Abbott signed SB 16 last Saturday which prohibits procedures and treatments for gender transitioning and gender reassignment, including puberty blockers that delay the onset of puberty. These treatments are used with their parents support when teens recognize that are not the gender they were assigned at birth. All evidence indicates that such treatments have positive psychological effects for these young people. Unfortunately Republicans have made this small group of kids a symbol of the culture war and gleefully inflict their narrow-minded views on them.

While I’m fairly confident that the increase in the legislature’s budget was warranted it sure doesn’t look good when they failed to address low teacher pay. You can largely blame Lt. Governor Dan Patrick for holding teacher pay raises hostage by tying them to private school vouchers which rural Republicans have repeatedly shown they won’t support.

Even though the state is being sued due to the over-broad language of the previous session’s anti-abortion legislation which forced several women into life and health danger when they had mis-carriages there was no effort to make adjustments. Instead, all we got was denial that there was even a problem.

Of course, there was plenty of time for the legislature to strip cities of their ability to regulate a broad range of environmental, labor and health and safety concerns such as the right to enforce rest breaks for construction workers in the summer heat, run no-kill animal shelters and to maintain local water quality.

Once again our legislature failed to expand Medicaid even though nearly 12% of Texas children are uninsured and rural hospitals continue to close, forcing many Texans to drive for hours to seek necessary medical care. A study commissioned by the Texas Medical Association found that in 2016, the cost of lower lifetime earnings and worse health for uninsured Texans was $57 billion. The price tag for hospitals and physicians who provide unsubsidized and uncompensated care was $3.5 billion. 7 years later and those costs have only gone up. Republican orthodoxy preventing the expansion of Medicaid available through the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare) continues to cause suffering and economic loss in Texas.

There was one small but significant of Medicaid though, soon the Texas mothers who give birth while qualified for Medicaid will be covered for 12 months after birth instead of 2 months as has been the case.

On the slightly positive side, teachers who retired in the last 3 years will get a 2% cost of living increase in their monthly checks, assuming Gov. Abbott signs SB 10 and the public votes to approve the constitutional amendment in the November 7 election. Older retirees will get either 4% or 6% increases depending on when they retired.

Now it’s on the special sessions that will likely be called to address some of the outstanding issues that Dan Patrick caused to be delayed past sine die due to his demands for private school vouchers and other unpopular legislation.

Published in the Seguin Gazette - June 7, 2023