79th Texas Legislature Special Session : : HB3
CSHB 3
House Floor Amendments
There’s lots of action on the House floor with all of the amendments to HB3. Some notables:
Rep. Eddie Rodriguez offered two amendments. One would require landlords to reduce rent after they’ve realized savings from the reduction in property taxes paid. The other would “stop the windfall for oil companies” by (if I have this right) requiring companies to pay the severance tax when oil prices top a certain threshold (like where they’re at now). Both amendments were tabled.
Rep. Pete Gallego sought to “decentivise the building of water pipelines” in order to secure future affordability of the resource. That got tabled, too.
Rep. Anchia brought the issue of immigration to the House floor. He opened discussion on his amendment to hold “illegal businesses accountable” with a strong offensive on those individuals that dehumanize migrant workers. I’m paraphrasing…
They call them illegal aliens like they came from a UFO. Or they say illegals like they are not human beings. Day after day, week after week, they subsidize our economy. On the federal level, HR 4437 wants to make them felons, make their families felons, make Catholic churches and charities felons, and ignore thousands and thousands of illegal businesses operating everyday. No one wants to talk about the demand side.
The amendment (which passed) would allow the Comptroller to adopt rules and provisions to review, audit, secure affidavits, etc. of certain companies suspected of taking tax deductions for undocumented labor by reducing it from their cost of goods sold. Revenue would be generated from fines on accounting improprieties.
Anchia called the federal government a disaster and Congress do-nothings. He reiterated that taxpayers subsidize these “illegal businesses” with public schools and county hospitals. “The undocumented workers are exploited by Texas companies while contributing to the community so mightily,” he said. “Businesses are breaking the law everyday… Proposals at the federal level to build a wall are laughable. With strong demand [for labor] no wall or physical measure will keep workers out of this state. The sucking sound is not coming from Mexico. The sucking sound is coming from the United States.”
April 25th, 2006 at 8:26 am
Great try by some great Representatives. Anchia was one of my favorite freshman last session and look at him stand up. Businesses are indeed the law breakers. You could look at it another way too. Businesses know the law, they are the US citizens so they knowingly break the law. Undocumented workers are simply looking for work and trying to feed their families. They defer to the companies that hire them, who should know what is legal. The real law breakers are the companies that benefit from undocumented labor. They are a giant vacuum sucking up all the cheap labor they can. And they want to get away with it too, while blaming the human labor movement just trying to survive.
April 25th, 2006 at 10:06 am
I agree, Sonia. I’m glad Anchia’s going after the businesses who are at the very root of this problem. Let’s get the government to enforce some of these laws. Maybe this is a start. Great Reps with great ideas.