Six weeks left. It’s getting busy.
Zoom, Zoom, Zoom
Posted in
Health care
Money’s Not the Only Thing
Coming soon to a House near you: The first real look at how this bunch votes on tough issues.
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Health care
Spending Theirs, Saving Ours
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.
Posted inState Government
Cutting the Strings
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.
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Health care
March Madness
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.]
Posted inState Government
Perry: We’re Not Gonna Take It
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.
Posted inState Government
Up Next: The Ides of March
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.
Posted inState Government
Brother, Can You Spare $556 Million?
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.
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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.
