Reading the Houston Chronicle, one might think liberal GOP Sen. Kevin Eltife of Tyler mattered that much. One would be wrong.
GOP Sen. Kevin Eltife… opposes tax relief
“Republican raining on tax-cut parade” screamed the H-Chron headline on Sunday, echoing the first line of the otherwise responsible Peggy Fikac’s opening paragraph:
As state lawmakers clamber aboard the tax-cut bandwagon, one Republican is raining on the parade that has been so enthusiastically arranged by his party’s leaders.
Let’s see, 22 of the chamber’s 30 members (a supermajority) are signed on to the nearly $5 billion tax cut proposal brought forward by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Senate Finance Chair Jane Nelson (R-Flower Mound).
Fikac dutifully allows Eltife to trot out the statist “we all want tax cuts” (yes, that quote is actually in there) which is followed by a “but.” BUT, you see, Eltife just wants to spend money. Eltife fundamentally believes government can spend your money better than you can.
“If this is the end of my political career, so be it,” Etlife reportedly told Fikac. “It’s not going to keep me from talking about the problems of the state.”
Can someone get Kevin some cheese to go with his whining?
Eltife is a fine one to talk about fiscal problems, given that he has been one of the most fiscally irresponsible members of the Texas Senate since he arrived on the scene.
Considering that in 2014 the senators to his left — Bob Deuell of Greenville and John Carona of Dallas — were soundly defeated, and that Eltife failed miserably in his local effort to take out popular conservative State Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), the senator is in a hole and cannot stop digging.
The only “rain” evident in the story would be the tears running down the cheeks of Eltife and the Capitol press corps as they realize just how out of touch and irrelevant they are in the reform-minded Senate of 2015.
