Health care

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.

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.

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.”

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.

You remember when Speaker Tom Craddick said the state was sitting on a $15 billion budget surplus?

U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, raised $1.7 million during the three months ending June 30 and got to the mid-year mark with $9.3 million in the campaign account.

By now, Texas businesses were supposed to have already filed returns and written checks for the newish business margins tax. They got a one-month reprieve from Comptroller Susan Combs, who decided the level of confusion was high enough to give everyone another month to calculate and pay up.

While other states are facing deficits large and small, the Texas Legislature will start its next session with a surplus of almost $15 billion, according to House Speaker Tom Craddick.

You think they decorate the malls too early? Here’s our version: There are only 90 money-raising, commercial-running, attack-mailing, town hall-squabbling, sign-stealing, robo-calling, finger-pointing, voter-abusing days left until the Texas primary elections.

Six Fort Worth Republicans are asking for an investigation of automated phone calls they say might have swung the results of a special election earlier this month.