Health care

State spending on school tax relief could force legislators to trample constitutional limits on budget growth next year, vexing conservatives who want both tax relief and limits on government growth.

Answers, we’ll get on November 7. Questions and speculation, we’ve got now.

Ethics police are baking up a list of things they want changed or clarified by the Texas Legislature next year, and in the meantime, it has become dangerous for lobbyists to split the tab on officeholder meals and gifts.

If the Senate Finance Committee can make it to Monday or Tuesday of next week with four or five of the school finance components intact, there’s a good chance Texans will see a new business tax, a cut in school property taxes, teacher pay raises and a bag full of other legislative wonders. But it’s gonna be a long weekend.

So here’s a question: Does the huge budget surplus make it harder or easier to pass the governor’s proposed tax bill? Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn added $3.9 billion to the $4.3 billion that was already in the surplus — and those numbers don’t include about $1 billion that’s already in the state’s Rainy Day Fund.

The party primaries include five congressional races, five in the state Senate, and 53 in the Texas House. In other words, it’s a slow to normal election year.

Every so often, an experienced reporter from somewhere else will get hired into the Capitol press corps and will proceed to surprise and dominate competitors with stories that should have been obvious to the natives.

What do you call the student who finishes last in medical school? A doctor. And what do you call legislation that passes by just one vote? A law, or one step closer to it. 

The formula here is just as it was at the beginning of the session: Failure to get results on school finance and property cuts would be horrible news for Rick Perry, less troubling for David Dewhurst and Tom Craddick, and of very little political consequence to the average member of the Texas Legislature.

It takes two to tango and two to tax, and the Senate isn’t dancing with the House on revenue for school finance. Their bottom line numbers are similar. Both houses started with the idea of lowering local school property taxes by 50 cents, and that sets the size of the project. But their methods of getting to the bottom line are as different as Mars and Venus.