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.
Brother, Can You Spare $556 Million?
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Health care
One Decade at a Time
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.
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Health care
Now It Starts
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.
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Health care
The Order of Things
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.
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Health care
Waiting
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.”
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Health care
Starting to Start
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.
Posted inState Government
And They’re Off!
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.
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Health care
Gloomy, but Still in the Black
You remember when Speaker Tom Craddick said the state was sitting on a $15 billion budget surplus?
Posted inState Government
Senate, Anyone?
Kay Bailey Hutchison’s term in the U.S. Senate runs through 2012 and she now says she won’t resign earlier than the end of next year if she runs for governor. She has formed an exploratory committee.
Posted inState Government
Nobody Has the Votes Yet (Week 6)
Add two more official candidates for Speaker of the House, calls for the head of House Parliamentarian and former Rep. Terry Keel, a constitutional amendment that would allow future coups in the House, and a “Solve for X” strategy and you’ll be up to date on the contest for control of the Legislature’s lower chamber.
