Congress

What happens if Gov. Rick Perry or Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst decide to run for federal office and win, creating a vacancy — or two — in Texas? That sound you hear is a herd of GOP pols rushing to update their resumes.

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Today, Gov. Rick Perry added two more issues — voter ID legislation and a call for a constitutional amendment requiring a balanced federal budget — to his list of "emergency items" that state legislators can begin deliberating on right away.

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Ted Cruz, who served as Texas Solicitor General from 2003 to 2008, is the latest to officially throw in for the race to replace GOP U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison.

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The race to replace outgoing U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison may only be days old, but at least one candidate in the crowded field is already pulling out the big guns.

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Minutes after learning of U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's decision not to seek re-election, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst demurred when asked whether he would run for her seat.

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The Democratic congressman from El Paso on what life will be like with the Republicans in control of the U.S. House, why the information released by WikiLeaks shouldn't be public, whether we should be sending troops to Mexico and why Gov. Rick Perry talks so much about spillover violence.

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The 112th Congress will convene Wednesday with new faces at the helm of a number House committees. Jennifer Stayton of KUT News talked with U.S. Rep. Lamar Smith, who will take over as chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, about the issues on which he expects to find bipartisan support, the assertion that Americans won't work certain jobs and why he supports a repeal of the new health care law.

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Texas lawmakers have vowed to cut their way to a balanced budget, in the face of a shortfall that could be as high as $25 billion. But their task pales compared to the federal government, which ran a deficit of almost $ 1.3 trillion last fiscal year. As KUT’s Matt Largey reports, a lot's at stake for Austin when the next Congress gets down to business on the next federal budget.

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For the seventh consecutive decade, Texas will gain seats in the U.S. House of Representatives after the decennial apportionment process, which means extra clout after the 2012 elections. With Republicans in control of redrawing the state's congressional districts — and adding the four new seats — they stand to benefit the most.

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U.S. Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Tyler, speaks out against "don't ask, don't tell" with a story about his time in the military — when an “overt homosexual” soldier misread a signal, apparently, and went to the wrong “straight” soldier’s bunk.

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Texas won big Tuesday with the release of 2010 census data. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune takes a look at the numbers, which will have legislators redrawing state maps to add four new congressional seats.

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Texas won big Tuesday with the release of 2010 census data. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune takes a look at the numbers, which will have legislators redrawing state maps to add four congressional seats.

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Texas will get four extra seats in the U.S. Congress in the decennial apportionment process, bringing the total to 36, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today.

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In his first competitive House race analysis for 2012, Nostradamus-on-the-Potomac Charlie Cook only lists two Texas congressional seats as potentially in play. One of them is not CD-17.

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For lower-ranking Republicans who would like to be higher-ranking and Democrats who barely remember ever having a shot at winning a statewide office, U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison's inscrutability about her future plans is getting to be a bit much.

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It was a bad Election Night for residents of the largest city in McLennan County. After years of regional dominance, their congressional seat belongs to Bryan, halfway to Houston; their state senate seat is 86 miles away in Granbury; and one of their House seats has moved three counties east, to Centerville.

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After watching his party lose 61 seats in the recent midterm elections, did U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, vote to stay the course or to give the boot to current Democratic House leadership? The world may never know.

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U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison says she will join U.S. Sen. John Cornyn in calling for a ban on all Congressional earmark spending. In the past, both used the controversial budget maneuver to funnel hundreds of millions of dollars back to Texas. Ben Philpott of KUT News and the Tribune reports.

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For the 16th event in our TribLive series, I interviewed the Democratic U.S. Congressman from Houston about why his party got slaughtered on Election Day, whether Nancy Pelosi should continue in a leadership role, why the Obama administration has been forced to play defense and what health care reform should look like going forward.

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Full audio and audience Q&A from our TribLive interview with U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston.

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