Abbott: Primary challenger promises have already been done

SAN ANTONIO (KTSA News) — Governor Greg Abbott called into the Ware & Rima show on Feb. 24, 2022, ahead of the March 1 primary election.

You can listen to the full interview above. Below is a transcript from the Ware & Rima Show. 

Trey Ware: If I can start, let me just get your thoughts about what developed in Ukraine last night, because it is a very important issue, particularly for military City USA.

Greg Abbott:  … Obviously, there will be a strong nexus with San Antonio, but, you know, the way that it seems that Biden has handled this, as he’s fumbling his way through it without doing very much to deescalate this before it got to this stage. So we’ll see how today plays out and we’ll see whether or not Russia does this strike and then backs out but, candidly, we are in a situation right now where it looks like it’s extraordinarily unpredictable, what’s going to happen, and there is great uncertainty about whether or not Biden and his allies are going to be able to do anything about it.

Trey Ware: Let me dive into some of these other topics here with you, Governor. First of all on the border security issue, we know that you have been you’ve got to guard troops down there, you’ve got folks from DPS down there, etc. Are you satisfied with the way it is or where it’s headed right now? It is the number one issue that I hear about.

Greg Abbott: Well, listen it’s hard to be satisfied when we have a federal government that is openly inviting people to come across our border.

Remember this: First of all, when Biden was elected to be president, he inherited a plan under President Trump that led to the lowest border crossings in multiple decades.  Trump did four things they put in place: One was to implement the remain in Mexico [Policy]; the other was Title 42; The other was the catch and release; and the fourth was to build a border wall. And those four things is all that Biden had to do was to keep in place and it would have continued to lead to low border crossings.

Not only did Biden eliminate all four of those, but he opened the border to everybody across the entire world, and now we have people coming in from more than 150 countries across the entire globe, candidly, including terror-sponsor nations.

You know, Biden’s worried about the border between Ukraine and Russia. Biden needs to be focused on the border between the United States and Mexico and he’s failing to do that. And the only state is stepping up and doing anything about his Texas.

Texas has done more than any state in history of the United States of America to secure a border includes more than just the 10,000 National Guard, that you made reference to, or the Texas Department of Public Safety down there making arrests. We converted two prisons into state jails, where we can house the people that we are arresting coming across the border. And now Texas is doing something that no state has ever done in the history of our country and that is we are building our own border wall.

Trey, I have an update for you on that in several regards: One, the audience needs to understand that the border wall that we’re building is the exact same border wall that President Trump was putting up. We’re using the manufacturers of the same panels that Trump used that is 30 feet high, is made out of steel, is very strong and sturdy and effective. But on top of that, many of your listeners will recall [that] a couple of months ago, a lot of these materials were laying on the ground that Biden inherited, and Biden was doing nothing with the border wall materials that you, the American taxpayer, paid for. We found a way to work the federal system so that we would be able to procure many of those panels and we procured 1700 of those panels until Biden himself found out what we were doing and he shut it down. That doesn’t mean we’re stopped yet because we think he shut it down illegally [and] we should be able to obtain more. [The] bottom line is that what the materials that Biden had left on the ground, Texas now using to build a border wall.

One last quick point about this … we are able to build a border wall faster and at a lower cost than even President Trump was able to build it for two reasons. One is because we don’t have to acquire the property the same way that President Trump did by eminent domain. Instead, we’re either using state land to build a border wall on or the people living on the border now with this massive acreage [are] so angry about President Biden in his open border policies, that they are granting us easements to build the wall on their property. And that allows us not to have to go through the litigation process and allows us access to more land that even President Trump did not have access to. So we continue to build a border wall and we will continue to do so until we return to the White House a President committed to do what the President is supposed to be doing under the Constitution, and that is to secure our sovereignty and to secure our border.

Trey Ware: To a man, your challengers have all said that they would completely militarize and close the border totally and completely. And they want to know why, and quite frankly, a lot of our listeners asked me this question, too, why haven’t you just shut the border down with the military?

Greg Abbott: Well, tell me what that means about “shut the border down”? Because we [have] got 1,250 miles of the border. We have a longer border that we have military to shut it down and we’re using all the military that we can. And we’re gonna have to be rotating them in and out …  because you [have] got to keep these soldiers fresh. But we got more than half of the Texas National Guard down there right now, about three fourths of the available National Guard. Remember this, some of our National Guard they’re deployed overseas, and they’re deployed on other missions. And so we’re using almost all of the National Guard that we have [available] that would be able to assist to make sure that we are closing down the border, as much as we are physically capable of doing so.

Trey Ware: In Arizona, the Attorney General there just recently declared what’s happening with their border and invasion, which gives the governor, their Governor Ducey, the opportunity to enforce article one and article four [of the U.S. Constitution], and go after the invading forces, primarily the cartels that are working on this and the others, the Coyotes [cartel] and whatever. Have you had any conversations with Mr. Paxton about doing the same thing here in the state of Texas? Do you have other approaches such as that?

Greg Abbott: Well, Trey we have been doing that. So if you go back to what they’re talking about with those constitutional articles [that were] authorized … [it] is actually to make a declaration that this is an invasion and to go after the cartels like you’re talking about. We have been going after the cartels. In fact, there is no state, more equipped, more capable, with more experience about going after the cartels, than Texas. In our Texas Department of Public Safety, they had remarkable expertise in going after them and … we converted two prisons into state jails where we are housing thousands of these people coming across the border that Texas has arrested. Many of them are cartel members or people who are working with cartel members, and we have sophisticated operations where we can detect what the cartels are doing before they even come across the border and to dismantle the cartels. Most of those run through the operation of the Texas Department of Public Safety and we’ve been battling against the cartels, quite literally, for decades now. So Texas has the best reputation in the country for going after the cartels.

Trey Ware: Okay. Let me move on to some of the other topics because I want to make sure that we get as many as we can. The next one would be property taxes. Mr. Huffines has been talking about eliminating completely. He’s got billboards up all over San Antonio, eliminating completely property taxes. I asked the others, meaning Col. West, Chad Prather and the others their stand on property taxes, they’re in agreement that property taxes in Texas need to go, what do you think?

Greg Abbott: Well, let’s talk about the only strategy they’ve offered. Remember, they talked about [that] “we need to eliminate property taxes,” which we do and that’s exactly the position that I have taken. The difference is, I’ve actually done something about it. The program that we began implementing back in 2019 is the exact program that some of these people are calling for.

They say that we need to continue to reduce the property tax rates until the ISD, the school property taxes are completely eliminated. And that’s exactly what I began as governor two sessions ago. And if people were to go look, as you know, property taxes, there are multiple aspects to it — The largest aspect are your school property tax rates.

On average school property tax rates across the entire state of Texas have been reduced by 10% to 15% in ISDS … and what we have been doing every session since 2019 is buying down those rates even more. And the goal is to continue for the state to buy down those property tax rates until they’re completely gone. So that is the school property taxes, separate from school property taxes.

You may know that there are some local property taxes that are assessed, and the way that we deal with that [is that] we make it harder for local governments to impose property taxes by limiting local government from increasing local government debt that would, in turn, increase property taxes. The way that we would do that is to amend the laws and require that all debts that would be approved at the local level would require a two thirds supermajority of the local governing body and that would make it far harder for them to increase debt that could subject local taxpayers to higher property taxes.

Trey Ware: And you can do this without a state income tax. Is that right? I mean, how would you replace that revenue?

Greg Abbott: Well, the way this is done is because we have already been doing this again, for the past four years, where we are buying down these property tax rates, and it has not required any new increase in revenue. What we were able to do is prioritize the revenue that’s been coming in to buy down these rates, and then sustain that buy down rate session after session after session, and so it has not required tapping into any new revenue source. And so first, let’s be clear, it wouldn’t require anything like an income tax because when I was governor, two sessions ago we not only eliminated the income tax, we made an income tax unconstitutional in the state of Texas. But right now, because of the way that we’re able to buy it down in a sustainable way, that would not require any additional source of revenue.

Trey Ware:
The next topic here is dealing with something that is just been a very explosive issue. You addressed it a couple of weeks ago: the fentanyl, the drugs and the overall crime that we see exploding across the state what needs to be done?

Greg Abbott: Well, you mentioned actually two topics there one fentanyl and [the other] is in crime across the state because they have different causes.

The first is fentanyl is an issue that’s coming across the border. For those who don’t know fentanyl is one of, if not the most deadly drug, to milligrams of fentanyl is a deadly dose and is made in China coming across our border. The only entity in America, and in the world, doing anything about it is the state of Texas.

It’s one thing that Texas Department of Public Safety and the National Guard are doing down on the border. They are seizing that fentanyl as it comes across the border. We have seized enough fentanyl to kill every man, woman and child in Texas, California, New York, Illinois and Florida. And you know what Joe Biden is doing nothing about this whatsoever. The only person do anything about it are leaders here in the state of Texas.

You mentioned crime in other parts of the state that there are various causes for that all of which relate back to one thing that is there are some communities in the state of Texas that deemphasize the role of law enforcement. They are these communities are adopting the California-style approach where there they’re going to try to reduce crime through community programs and it simply does not work. Programs like defunding the place and because of the adoption of defunding the police and communities like Austin, I said, Listen, we’re not going to have that here in the state of Texas in the state of Texas, we support our law enforcement officers and we do not defund them. And so I pushed for and got passed a bill that would defund any city that deepens law enforcement.

Second, there’s there’s another area in the state, where there’s a similar de emphasis on law enforcement that we’ve seen an increase in crime. And that’s over in Houston, Texas, where we have these judges who ran as judges under the banner of Democrat socialists. And they’ve been letting people out on bail, dangerous criminals out on bail, it could be personal recognizance bonds or whatever the case may be. But they have gone back out and believe this or not Trey, people released from jail that killed more than 150 people in the Harris County area. And so we passed bail reform this past session, to crack down on these releasing dangerous criminals.

What I’m about to tell you is very important. There are two components of what was needed. One was the law that we passed into as a constitutional amendment. And that constitutional amendment, as you might imagine, requires two thirds vote. Twice we brought the constitutional amendment to restrict bail, and letting people out on bail. And every single time that Democrats refused to pass that constitutional amendment. Elections have consequences. Your listeners need to be listening, because we can keep people behind bars and not let that let them out on bail, posing a danger to our community. If we elect Republicans to office this November, to make sure we can pass that constitutional amendment to keep dangerous criminals behind bars.

Trey Ware:
Okay. Lastly, and I know you’ve got to go and I do too, but just so we can make this quick: mandates. Are you going to call a special session to officially and formally outlaw mandates going forward?

Greg Abbott: Mandates. Let’s be clear. Mandates currently are against the law pursuant to my executive order. Listen, we had a regular session and three special sessions where the legislature had a chance to eliminate mandates and, remember this, not only during the regular session when they had all of those months to able to do something about mandates. But I actually put it on the special session call for them to do so that about mandates and the legislature did nothing about the mandates. And so calling a special session doesn’t mean it’s going to lead to the legislature passing anything, which they did not do. And so I kept in place the mandates and we have been working closely with the Attorney General’s Office. And just this past week, we got another ruling out of the Fifth Circuit, the Federal Court of Appeals, saying that these vaccine mandates in this case that were imposed by United Airlines were unlawful. And the Federal Court of Appeals put a stay on it saying that people should not have to choose between a job and a job. And when we had the Fifth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruling in our favor on things like that, that means that my executive order prohibiting mandates is going to be upheld.

Trey Ware: Will you support whoever the Republican nominee is?

Greg Abbott: 100%.