| Thank you, Mr. Speaker and members. First of all, there are some provisions of this bill I think were done very well. I worked very hard with Mr. Davis to put the $82 million for mental health. I don't know exactly because I don't have any notes with me whether or not that fully restores the dollars that were cut in 2003. I don't think it does, but hopefully it does. But that's the basis of my discussion with you and why I think it's important to vote no on this bill. Not the mental health issues but it's about issues of time.
Now, in 2003, I guess you could say a 20 foot hole was dug and the needs of the State of Texas were reduced by that 20 foot hole, the money that pays for those needs. Since then, there's been a little bit put back, and a little bit more put back there, and a little bit more put back there and now the hole is only 10 feet deep. But the people's needs and the dollars necessary to deal with those needs have not even gotten them back to ground level. And since the 2000 budget was adopted, that budget cut the funding down to probably per capita levels, that are more like a fiscal year in 1999 or fiscal year 2000. This budget writes a 2008-2009 budget. The population of the State of Texas has grown. And in the time that the population of the state of Texas has grown since fiscal year 1999 or fiscal year 2000, clearly the needs of the people of the State of Texas have grown with that population. The problem is the budget is still below ground level of the necessary fertilizer to make sure that individuals can grow or the necessary dollars to make sure that individuals lives do not get worse. Sometimes it's an illusion that things are better as opposed to the reality. And so, again, if you're in a 20 foot hole, and now you're only in a 10 foot hole, and the whole world is at ground level, you really haven't gained that much back to where you started. Or time has just gone by and people just get less because the budget has stalled and remains below the level necessary to fund people's lives.
There's another concern I have, and I've talked about this stuff all session but I think it's important—middle income families. Most people in Texas started off in a rural area, their families were probably what we would call dirt poor, and Texas made it possible for people to go and get a higher education by having very low tuition and having schools that were available in different parts of this state. And in doing so, even if you didn't have a lot of money, and even if you couldn't get a loan, and even if you didn't get a Pell Grant, somebody could send their children to college based on the money they made scratching the dirt. And now, with taking away that low tuition, the responsibility is on scholarships, Texas grants, but the scholarship money doesn't even come to the same level funding the number of students that could use it before. And then those families that need to go and send their kids to school that are a nurse, a firefighter, married, or a police officer, or whoever it might be, they make over $80,000 a year in family income, and they have to pay full freight, the whole full cost of tuition at the schools in the state of Texas. I'm not talking about people who make under $25,000 a year, I'm talking about people who believe they have succeeded in the American Dream, and they're trying to figure out how they're going to send their kids to college.
Now there's a guy, who I don't think liked me very much, and I don't blame him, because there's a lot of people who don't like me. But he came into my office and we had a discussion and he said to me, "I've got four children"—he happened to be a news reporter, TV, so he did okay. He said, "I've got four children—one of them is starting college now, and I'm trying to figure out how I'm going to put all four of my children through college. And before, tuition was reasonable, but I'm not so sure now that I've done everything that I can do that I can actually pay for my children's college education." This isn't a poor guy, this is just a guy who thought he had gone out and done everything he needed to do, and you should have seen the look on his face. The look on his face was that he was absolutely defeated. And defeated by the actions of the State of Texas. We had $3 billion that we could have spent to help this guy out, to make sure that he could afford to pay for his children to go to school. No, he wasn't poor. But none of that money went to reduce or freeze the cost of higher education so that his children could succeed. The man, he's got to be 55, 65-years-old, trying to figure it out. And the thing that I could never understand was why we would reverse our policy of making sure that people who are either scratching the dirt or done everything they know how to do to make their family successful, make it harder for them to succeed, but make it easier for people who already have money to succeed. I believe we ought to make it possible for people who have children that it's their first time in college, the first child in that family to go to college. But we shouldn't make it so that there can never be another child of that particular family that can go to college either. Because if they do well enough, then they'll make too much money, but not enough money to send their own children to college. And that is not the Texas way.
The other one is my district, and I will tell you, there was some confusion about Texas Southern and the vote on the floor the other day and I respect the will of this house if I get the ability to do a run on the floor with whatever it is I'm trying to do. But, I have been in this legislature for 16 years and Dianne Delisi, you know, in that 16 years that at different times that I fought very hard for Texas Southern University. I had done everything that I know how to do to make sure that the school is strong and independent. I've even risked being the one to do that and have to pull it back because things got right. But when what I believed was a provision in the budget to protect the school's independence and future, that gave that university and all of us the ability to know what success or failure was and gave a year's period of time in order to determine that. When the budget was opened up after it had been gaveled closed to remove that provision, I wondered immediately what we were doing here and why the whole budget had to be opened up to remove that provision. We were told it would cause a point of order on the budget. But clearly that point of order would have been overruled.
What I'm saying to you today is higher education is extremely important to the future of this state. And it's important to the people in my district as well. And it's important to the people who go to the schools in all of our districts as well. But I would hope that you would understand that I respect you when you fight for what's going on in your district, and I think that this appropriations bill should respect all of the needs that we have. And I hope that you would help me over the biennium, the interim, make sure that Texas Southern University is protected because HB 1 does not do that.
The other thing that I would ask you to do is to continue to look at how the budget has been used this session and whether it has been used for good or it's been used for politics. And I know we're in politics. But in the final analysis, what the budget should be used for is to improve the State of Texas. So I hate to vote no on this budget because I think there are a lot of improvements to the world, in this budget that we live in, and in Texas. But folks, it doesn't get the State of Texas back to ground level. And to me, that's just not acceptable. So I would ask that people who feel the same as I do to vote no on this budget because, although a lot of good work has been done, and Mr. Chisum has worked very hard, and other people have worked very hard, I don't believe that it is the measurement of what's good for the State of Texas to still have us in a hole in the ground. And so I'd ask you to vote no. |
