Conservatives in Texas are fed up with out of control property taxes, spending that’s going through the roof, and a new business tax created to satiate the demands of growing government.

Republicans seeking to make substantive policy reforms face as their chief obstacle, all too often, Republican elected officials. These “Republicans” like to say they believe in fiscal restraint and local control – just not when it stands in the way of spending your money. The only restraint they favor tends to be in the form of keeping taxpayers from interfering with spending increases. This makes something of an inconvenience of the 92% of Republican voters who supported a ballot question calling for strict spending limits.

A special House committee was formed this week to address the state’s out-of-control property taxes. House Speaker Tom Craddick appointed some of the Legislature’s strongest fiscal conservatives to the committee.

At least Susan Combs is paying attention to the needs of the state’s economy. With businesses struggling to understand, let alone pay, the confusingly complex new business tax, Comptroller Combs announced she’s giving everyone an extra month to make sense of what her office called “the complexity” of the new tax. That the new tax isn’t needed, and shouldn’t have been implemented to begin with, just adds gross insult to very real injury.

Even we have trouble keeping up with all the different taxes and fees and today we learned that a 2001 law passed by the Legislature allows Texas cities to impose property taxes on leased cars. The Galveston Daily News reports that League City collects $243 per year on a car appraised at $40,000, but that they may repeal the tax at tomorrow’s Council meeting.

Businesses around the state are only now learning how much they are going to have to fork over to Austin under the new business tax — which is due one month from today. The picture isn’t pretty and the results could be disastrous; which translates into lost jobs.

Liberals are always looking for anything they can dress up as “facts” to fit the left-wing social-engineering schemes they’ve been promoting for decades. No different is a “study” released by two leftist activist groups that claims Texas has one of the worst “income gaps” in the nation… And their solution to close the gap is to kill the economy. Are there poor in Texas? Someone once said there will always be poor among us. But in Texas, the poor have great opportunities to be poor no more.

The Empower Texans PAC today announced its enthusiastic endorsement of Tryon Lewis in the run-off race for House District 81.

People and jobs are fleeing high-tax states and states with income taxes. Where are they going? States with lower taxes and no income taxes. This is a trend that started in the 1990s, and is reflected yet again in 2007, as 20,000 per day shifted around the country. And for lawmakers in Texas who think we can coast by on our old reputation as being "open for business," they’d better think again — we have to fight to stay competitive.