#TXLEGE: Buffet Bill gets WORSE with new pro-abortion angle....

"Perversity is in his heart,
He devises evil continually,
He sows discord."
Proverbs 6:14

The merits and political peril of the Buffett bill bad enough that it was an easy call to join the statewide leadership letter denouncing it.  Making matters that much better, we just came across an abortion related angle that, honestly, has to be seen to be believed.  But we can assure you, it's very real.

It's not a secret that Buffett is a gigantic liberal and, as such, it's also not a secret that Buffett has donated over a BILLION dollars to pro-abortion groups (primarily, but not limited to, Planned Parenthood) over the decades.

But...did you know there's a Texas-specific angle?!?

In 2013, the 83rd Texas legislature passed one of the strongest pro-life laws in the country.  Unfortunately, in 2016, that law was significantly scaled back by the United States Supreme Court.  And therein lies the hand of Warren Buffett....

Much of the pseudo-'intellectual' justification for the 2016 SCOTUS decision came from a UT-based (naturally) program called the Texas Policy Evaluation Project; and you'll never guess who gave them their seed funding:

Make sure you pay attention to the arrow (just sayin)

As the Bloomberg article details:

The Texas Policy Evaluation Project, known as TxPEP, assigned five researchers to traverse the state to gather statistics from abortion providers, amass public records and interview women. The project was founded in 2011 at the University of Texas at Austin to study the impacts of reproductive health measures passed by state lawmakers. Its work was enabled by funding from the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, named after Warren Buffett’s deceased first wife.

[Note: Emphasis added.]

As Michael Quinn Sullivan wrote last summer:

A University of Texas program is being lauded by liberals for helping undermine in court the Lone Star State’s safety-focused laws regarding abortion. Given the role the program has played in undermining commonsense laws, it is another example of a tax-funded institution working against the taxpayers.

The Texas Policy Evaluation Project (TxPEP) is a UT program to study the “impact” of legislation on “reproductive” issues. This entity has yet to find a limitation on abortion or abortion providers it didn’t hate, because it was designed to provide academic cover for tax-funded abortion services.

An agency of state government, UT’s pro-abortion project was funded by left-wing billionaire Warren Buffett.

....

While TxPEP claims to be privately funded, it operates under the auspices of the University of Texas. This gives the pro-abortion advocates running it – one “researcher” formerly headed an abortion services program in Massachusetts – both an easy tax shelter for liberal donors (like Buffett) and legitimizes their findings.

And how do our allegedly conservative Texas Senators, in their first session since the 2016 SCOTUS decision, address the role Warren Buffett played in undermining Texas' pro-life laws?!?

Apparently by arraigning special regulatory favors for Buffett's business interests (all while killing the pro-free market bill that would have addressed Buffett's concerns without special privileges).

Bottom Line: This boggles the mind, but it's really happening.

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Lt. Governor Dan Patrick: (512) 463-0001
Senator Kelly Hancock: (512) 463-0599