Don Huffines - Former State Senator Joins Houston's Morning News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
All seven fifty two time here and here's his going
to new Is the Texas home though, is as cheap
as it used to be. You add in the current
interest rates with our current property taxes, and you know,
even with property tax relief, it's still not affordable for
a lot of folks. Don Huffines joints as former state
senator head of the Huffines Liberty Foundation. They wrote a

(00:21):
paper on how to make things more affordable. It all
goes back to the deep state government? Is that corex, sir?

Speaker 2 (00:30):
Oh, yeah, this is Don Huffine. It sure does. Yeah.
It is the number one driver for making housing more
affordable is government, government regulations, zoning. Local governments work very
hard often in Texas to prohibit homes for being built.

(00:54):
And you know, it's really interesting that they very seldom
ever welcome and home builders or developers to their towns.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Interesting. Well, the song was just about Hill Country. I know,
that's one of those places right where it's gotten very,
very difficult to build a home here in Texas. Well.

Speaker 2 (01:14):
It is it's simply about supply and demand, and it's
fundamental to the free market. And when you have a
lot of supply, prices go down. And when you have
a limited supply, of course prices go up. So the
simple solution is for us to help home builders and

(01:34):
developers build as many houses as they possibly can, and
then the price will fall. And of course you already
mentioned property tax. You know, if we can eliminate at
least the school property tax, that's a big help. And
we can do that. We have a white paper on that,
how finds liberty foundation, How that can happen without increasing

(01:54):
taxes or creating a new tax. It's about fiscal discipline
and we can always make housing more affordable.

Speaker 1 (02:02):
Well, I'm glad you brought up the fiscal discipline. I
had Vans again, I don't know if you know Vans
or not, from economic consulting on a little bit earlier,
and we were talking about Doge and he thinks, and
I believe this as well, that we should take the
Doze model and we should break it to Texas. We
should do with state government, and we should do it
with local government. Imagine how much waste there is in
Harris County.

Speaker 2 (02:24):
Amen. Amen, we should doge every government agency in Texas.
When I was in the Senate, I was just shocked
that there's really no third party audits ever for government
agencies or the state government in general. And you know
the state government spends. With this new budget, they're going
to spend four hundred and sixty million dollars a day,

(02:48):
seven days a week. And I guarantee you people are
stealing money government. There's that kind of money flowing out
every single day. There's a lot of sticky fingers out
there taking cash, and a lot of people need to
be going to prison. I found a bunch in Dallas
County when I was in office, and I got six

(03:08):
people put in prison for stealing from taxpayers. And we
need to doge the state of Texas.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
I would agree, sir, that'd be a good place to start.
I guess the other thing, too, is why are we
being so stingy with property tax relief. We have enough
of a budget surplus where we could certainly take the
home set exhibit as exemption and make it a lot
more than one hundred and forty thousand dollars that's been proposed.

Speaker 2 (03:36):
That's a very good question, and I can't answer it
because I'm just shocked that the fact that the legislature
won't give back the overfunding that they've received from the
Texas taxpayers. I mean, this is our money. This isn't
government money. Government doesn't create money. It's all from the taxpayer,
and it should be returned. If we've overpaid our bills,

(03:58):
we should return it, all of it. That's a great taxpayer.
And one thing I just want to point out that
local governments are the biggest source of really abuse of
power in the state of Texas. There's no checks and balances, Jimmy,
for local governments like there is at the state or
federal level.

Speaker 1 (04:17):
You're right. And the fraud, the fraud level of guard
the fraud level in Harris County, in the city of
Houston is I mean, imagine the multi millions of dollars
we could save there. I wish I had more time, Sir,
I got to run. But thank you so much, Former
State Senator Don Happiness. You all have a great day.