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It’s Memorial Day. Like many, I spent it with family – local members being my daughter, her Uncle Sam’s Misguided Child husband, and a couple of my favorite grandchildren. OK, they’re all favorites, but these two are the youngest and localest. After dinner and a swim, on to vege out a bit. Just finished “Mister Roberts” and starting “Von Ryan’s Express”, two good roles for two actors I was not terribly fond of. But both deal in their own ways with taking care of the troops, or sailors as the case may be, who do the work.<\/p>\n
And then I get to the news out of Texas: the Senate adjourned without action on a bill to provide financial help for Guard members whose pay was screwed up by Texas when deployed to the border.\u00a0 A simple matter, really: to change Texas state and US Army norms, Texas paid the Guard twice a month – but only withheld taxes once a month. At the end of the year the men found they were an average of $867.29 short on taxes withheld. House Bill 3031 would provide up to $6 million of the $9 million total shortfall.<\/p>\n
\nHB 3031, however, was not voted upon before a Wednesday deadline for action by the Senate.<\/p>\n
The bill was overwhelmingly approved by the House with only 17 days remaining in a regular session that ends Monday.<\/p>\n
The Senate received the bill one day before its Veteran Affairs Committee had its last meeting and with the meeting\u2019s agenda already set. The bill faced another obstacle when no senator agreed to sponsor it in the upper chamber.<\/p>\n
The tax issue, first reported by The Texas Tribune and the Military Times<\/a> in October, stems from a problem with the state payroll system, which was not set up to properly process payments for National Guard troops on state duty. In September 2021, Abbott ramped up the scale of Operation Lone Star, at one point boasting that 10,000 troops were deployed on the mission. The tax withholding issues began the following month.<\/p>\n