A bill that would ban a "guaranteed income" program that's a favorite of the 3 Democrat Harris County Commissioners and the Democrat Party is moving up quickly in the Texas Legislature.
State Senator Paul Bettencourt's Senate Bill 2010 aims to ban local governments from adopting guaranteed income programs, such as the program Harris County commissioners have already been administering.
Bettencourt is a Harris County-based Republican state senator.
The bill says the pilot program undermines "their intended purpose by pulling resources from the very communities they aim to support, exacerbating poverty rather than alleviating it."
Mr. Bettencourt's bill passed the state Senate on April 23rd, then went to a House of Representatives committee which looked at the bill this week, then passed it along on Tuesday to the full House for a vote.
It seeks to remove $25 million from the Harris County budget as local Democrat leaders have been trying out a program called Uplift Harris, which provides $500 a month is subsidies to almost 2,000 low-income families, which has been modified after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton successfully brought a court challenge to the program that made it to the state Supreme Court.
On a national scale, some Democrats have come out in favor a very similar concept, the Universal Basic Income, a scheme to use government money to provide monthly incomes to people across the nation.
Bettencourt's bill is now being prepared by the committee that decides when the House votes on certain bills, so the House could take up the bill any time.
If it makes it through the House, it's likely the bill will be signed by Governer Greg Abbott.