Hightower Lowdown

Look out—he's loose! For five months, George W. "Shrub" Bush, our governor who wants to be your president, had been holed up in Austin with his advisors and fund? raisers, but now he's ready to hit the hustings.

Prince George said in his campaign announcement that there are two big reasons he should be elevated to the White House next year. One is his "compassionate conservatism" theme, which he illustrates by saying that he would "leave no child behind" in his administration. His second reason is that he has "a proven record of performance as governor."

Hmmm. Let's examine both of these reasons together—that is, what kind of proven record does Gov. George W. Bush have on not leaving any child behind? There were two major bills in this year's legislative session to benefit children. One was to provide $250 million to make sure that every child in Texas will get access to kindergarten. Bush lobbied hard to get this money deleted—he wanted to use it instead to give more tax cuts to his corporate contributors. The second bill was to fund health care coverage for about a third of the state's children who presently have none. Governor Compassion, however, wanted to limit this program so severely that it would have denied the coverage to about 200,000 kids. The good news is that Democrats in the legislature got the funding for both programs, so Shrub wasn't able to leave these children behind, despite his best efforts.

On the other hand, Bush showed plenty of compassion in this legislature for corporate interests, including the delivery of some $700 million in corporate property tax cuts; a special $45 million tax break for Exxon and other oil-well owners; a major exemption from air-pollution laws for utilities, oil, and chemical corporations (which gave $500,000 to his '98 gubernatorial race and $300,000 so far to his presidential campaign); a $65 million R&D subsidy for high-tech firms; and more leeway for Southwestern Bell (also a major contributor) to raise phone rates. "Business fared real well," deadpanned the lobbyist for the Texas chamber of commerce.