Making a promise only matters when the promise is kept. We each understand the need to keep our promises and do what we say. If only our politicians would do likewise…
Proverbs 25:14 reads, “Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give.”
Politicians like to brag about how they will maneuver legislative debate and capture stunning victories–they just need the citizenry to back off so they can “get things done.”
In other words: shut up and look the other way.
Frankly, I’m losing track of how many times self-proclaimed conservative legislators have told grassroots activists to “stand down” on an important point of principle because a super-special, secret backroom deal has been cut for future action on bigger issues… only for the promised results never to materialize.
Too many politicians want credit for making a deal, even if nothing of substance gets delivered.
In the real world, a deal is only as good as the tangible results. Everything else is a con job.
For example, the property tax burden in Texas is still stifling despite more than 25 years of GOP promises to the contrary. If the new budget is adopted, the Texas state government will have grown by 40 percent in the last four years.
Is that what you expected to be down-ballot in an election that gave us Donald Trump slashing away at federal bureaucracies? Too many Texas Republicans have adopted the showmanship of Donald Trump without embracing his commitment to delivering on his promises.
Not a single Republican campaigned to “raise your tax burden slower” or to “make government more burdensome less quickly than the Democrats.”
Yet, that’s what we have been getting.
In the even-numbered years of political campaigns, politicians promise to be about the business of lowering tax burdens, reducing the size of government, and putting bureaucracies on a strict diet. In the odd-numbered years of Texas’ legislative sessions, we are treated to their dealmaking with the crony cartel of handout-seeking lobbyists, proclamations honoring the dishonorable, and shell games in place of real tax relief.
As the days slip away in this legislative session, as they have in the sessions for the last two decades of GOP control, the goods aren’t yet being delivered. In fairness, the Texas Senate seems to be trying. The Texas House is a different story.
Having crossed the halfway mark of Texas’ legislative session, Republican lawmakers must stop with the bluster lest voters see them as nothing more than con men. It is past time for the politicians to start delivering on their promises.
