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All Coverage

  • Just Another Day at the Office

    By Ross Ramsey

    Remember the cartoons where the sheepdog and the coyote would meet at the time clock every morning, say hello, ask about the families, punch in, harass each other all day, then greet each other pleasantly as they punched out for the evening? Full Story 

  • Crunch Time

    By Ross Ramsey

    You get the feeling that this legislative session is just like the last one, run in reverse. Instead of starting with a whimper and closing with a bang, it started with a bang. It shows no signs of ending with one. Full Story 

  • Spending Theirs, Saving Ours

    By Ross Ramsey

    The Texas Senate approved a $182.2 billion budget that includes over $10 billion in federal stimulus money, avoids across-the-board cuts in state agencies, and leaves the state's $9.1 billion Rainy Day Fund untouched. Full Story 

  • Cutting the Strings

    By Ross Ramsey

    Texas can get $556 million in federal stimulus money without any permanent changes in its unemployment insurance program, according to an advisory letter from the U.S. Department of Labor. Full Story 

  • March Madness

    By Ross Ramsey

    Our bracket says Pitt will win the NCAA men's basketball championship. That doesn't mean it'll happen. And if it does happen, we won't be able to claim (honestly, anyway) that we knew it was gonna happen. We'll just have guessed right. [eds. note: After this was written, Pitt lost to Villanova, failed to make the Final Four, ruined our bracket, and painfully proved our point about predicting the future.] Full Story 

  • Perry: We're Not Gonna Take It

    By Ross Ramsey

    Gov. Rick Perry says the state should turn down $555 million in federal stimulus money tied to unemployment insurance, because the requirements are too strict, prompting some lawmakers to say they'll push to get enough support for the program to go around him. Full Story 

  • Up Next: The Ides of March

    By Ross Ramsey

    The "county fair" section of the legislative session — the part at the beginning that's taken up with glad-handing and rattlesnake roundup demonstrations and mariachis and pre-schoolers and city and county and association "days" at the Capitol — is coming to a close. Full Story 

  • Brother, Can You Spare $556 Million?

    By Ross Ramsey

    You're really out in the weeds when you find yourself listening to arguments about reform provisions for unemployment insurance, but that's the first of what might be a series of firefights over the federal stimulus money available to the state. Full Story 

  • One Decade at a Time

    By Ross Ramsey

    That noise you hear in the Senate and the House isn't just partisan barking — it's the early signal that, in two years, those lawmakers will be drawing political maps and spilling political blood. Full Story 

  • Now It Starts

    By Ross Ramsey

    The new speaker's first bit of danger is out of the way, with House members on their way home for a long weekend to mull their committee assignments and to consider the difference between what they hoped for and what they got. Full Story 

  • The Order of Things

    By Ross Ramsey

    The conversation in the halls is mostly about House committee assignments and who'll get what. The underlying political tension is between Democrats who think Speaker Joe Straus should reward them for making up 80 percent of the vote that put him in the corner office, and Republicans who think he needs to consolidate power within his own party in the closely divided chamber to have any chance of hanging on to the controls. Full Story 

  • Waiting

    By Ross Ramsey

    The House has its rules in place after a long day of warbling and negotiating, and the one that sticks out is the rule that lets the House depose a speaker with only 76 votes — a simple majority. The speaker no longer has the power to ignore privileged motions, including motions to "vacate the chair." And an effort to raise the bar — to require 90 votes, or 100, to unseat a speaker fell short. It's 76: If it were a rear-view mirror on the Speaker's dais, it'd have words on it: "Warning! Hostile representatives in mirror are closer than they appear." Full Story 

  • Starting to Start

    By Ross Ramsey

    Week three. Speaker race, over. House, kumbayahed. Two-thirds rule, guarded condition. Senate, patching things up. Revenue estimate, ouch. Base budget, tight. President, sworn in, twice. Full Story 

  • And They're Off!

    By Ross Ramsey

    The House elected a new speaker. The Senate started with a partisan dogfight. The comptroller filed a gloomy forecast on the state's revenue for the next two years. The Republican candidates for governor — that's an election more than a year away — revealed multi-million-dollar bank balances. Once all that had rolled out, lawmakers left for a week. The House will return next week for a day, then do rules the week after that. And the Senate is gone until January 26. Soon enough, it'll seem like they never left. Full Story