And the crowd goes wild. Top House and Senate negotiators agreed to a two-year budget for the state of Texas Friday that restores about $4 billion of $5.4 billion in cuts to public education made in 2011. It also creates a path for lawmakers to put $2 billion toward water infrastructure projects. The five House [...]
Posts Tagged ‘David Dewhurst’
Hotze sues Obamacare
You would think that once the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act was constitutional that that would settle things, but then you would not be Steve Hotze. Steve Hotze, a Houston-area physician and major Republican campaign donor who has built his career around alternative medicine, says he is filing suit against the federal [...]
Yes, Rick Perry still hates Medicaid
We’re not surprised by this, right? The Texas rhetoric around a key facet of federal health reform — whether the state will expand subsidized insurance to its poorest adults — reached the high water mark on Monday, with back-to-back press conferences at the Capitol featuring political leaders on both sides of the aisle. Republicans including [...]
More concern of convenience
David Dewhurst channels Dan Patrick. Dewhurst, noting his differing view from Straus, said he’s a product of public schools and wants to support them, but said he doesn’t want to leave an estimated 315,000 Texas students in academically unacceptable schools. “I’m mad. I’m mad as hell about that,” Dewhurst said, adding that it takes on [...]
School finance system ruled unconstitutional
Surely no one is surprised by this. The system Texas uses to fund public schools violates the state’s constitution by not providing enough money and failing to distribute the money in a fair way, a judge ruled Monday in a landmark decision that could force the Legislature to overhaul the way it pays for education. [...]
Wolverines!
This would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. While advocates of Texas secession may have stalled with their online petition efforts, state lawmakers have filed numerous bills objecting to major White House initiatives and suggesting the state doesn’t have to abide them. Newly elected Sen. Donna Campbell, R-San Antonio, has filed a constitutional amendment [...]
Here come the tax cut proposals
When the sunny revenue forecast came in, we immediately got one crappy tax cut idea, to eliminate the margins tax at a cost of $4.5 billion. The Texas Association of Business didn’t care for the idea, at least at first, but are now warming up to it, because this is what they do. For Bill [...]
Dewhurst and Nelson push Medicaid reform
I’m reserving judgment on this for now. Lt. Gov David Dewhurst and Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, on Wednesday touted Senate proposals they say would bring down spending on Medicaid, the state’s health program for the poor, by instituting quality-based payment reforms for long-term care services and measures to catch Medicaid fraud and abuse. “Our [...]
Abbott’s millions
If there’s one thing Attorney General Greg Abbott is good at, it’s accumulating money. Fueling growing speculation of a bid for the Texas Governor’s Mansion, Attorney General Greg Abbott reported Tuesday he has amassed a campaign war chest of $18 million, three times the amount claimed by incumbent Gov. Rick Perry. While both men publicly [...]
School finance dispatches
Some bad news for the state in the school finance lawsuit. State District Judge John Dietz directed state attorneys Wednesday to redo a key study that underestimated the funding advantages of higher-wealth school districts — a blow to the state’s arguments in a school finance lawsuit that current differences among districts are insignificant. Dietz asked [...]
Day One of the Lege
What do we know so far? Same old Rick Perry. Gov. Rick Perry called for tax relief and a lean approach to budgeting as he addressed the Senate, even as the state faces a lawsuit from school districts over funding and concerns over the effects of budget cuts approved two years ago. [...] Perry said [...]
Yes, Dewhurst is running for re-election
I know you were dying to know. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who has signaled before that he plans to run for re-election, punctuated his plans with some extreme math in a Friday interview. “I am 101 percent firm on running for re-election. You will see a number of things that I will be doing over [...]
Finally a focus on water
The good news is that the 2013 Lege does seem to be serious about water issues. House Speaker Joe Straus recently said Texas’ water needs will be a high priority, while Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who presides over the Senate, proposed tapping the Rainy Day Fund for $1 billion to finance new infrastructure identified in [...]
Not just vouchers, corporate-sponsored vouchers
You can’t make this stuff up. Speaking in a Catholic school classroom in Austin, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and state Sen. Dan Patrick gave the first details of what they promised would be a wide-ranging set of proposals for public education policy during the upcoming legislative session. Patrick, a Houston Republican who chairs the Senate [...]
It’s all about 2014
This is very easy to understand. Signaling austerity despite improving state revenues and a push by some to undo cuts to key programs, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and leading GOP senators said they plan to write a budget for the next two years that is smaller than allowed under a spending cap adopted Thursday. The [...]
On peeing in a cup
Another solution in search of a problem from the Republican leadership. Out of the more than 250 bills filed Monday, the first possible day to file legislation for the 83rd session, one measure — concerning drug testing for welfare applicants — is already drawing the support of the state’s top lawmakers and the criticism of [...]
Dewhurst prepares to ditch public education
This tells you all you need to know about his priorities. Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst is poised to announce Senate leadership changes today that could have a profound effect on Texas education policy — including giving fuel to a push for school choice. Dewhurst plans to name Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, as chairman of the [...]
Dewhurst says he’s running for re-election in 2014
Peggy Fikac was first to report that David Dewhurst is not planning to fade away just yet. The last time we asked Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst what he plans to do in 2014, it was soon after he lost the U.S. Senate nomination to Ted Cruz. He asked if reporters minded giving him a couple [...]
Rick Perry is running for Governor again in 2014
He is until he specifically says he isn’t, anyway. I don’t see any reason to call what we’re seeing otherwise. Gov. Rick Perry has quietly replenished his depleted campaign war chest since he abandoned his presidential bid in January, fueling speculation that the longest-serving governor in Texas history will seek yet another term in 2014. [...]
Fifth Circuit strikes again
Dammit. A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that Texas did not act unconstitutionally when it moved to expel Planned Parenthood from a health and contraceptive care program for low-income women. The ruling overturned a preliminary injunction, issued in April by U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel of Austin, that banned Texas from enforcing rules designed to [...]
You weren’t supposed to be mad at me!
Oh, the humanity! Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst on Friday continued to fight a battle that he had lost three days before when Ted Cruz defeated him for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination. Cruz and his allies had effectively cast Dewhurst as a tax-and-spend moderate, a criticism that Dewhurst was still eager to rebut during a [...]
What will The Dew do next?
So Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst isn’t going anywhere next January. I’m going to put aside the questions of what happened for now and ask instead what happens in 2014? As we know, there are three people running for what they originally thought would be an open seat race for Lite Guv in 2014. What happens [...]
Runoff Day
At long last, the 2012 primary season is about to be over in Texas, other than perhaps the HCDE race. To say the least, it’s been a long, strange trip, one that I hope goes down in the books as a bizarre aberration, never to be repeated or approximated. If you have not voted yet [...]
Runoff turnout
Who knows what to expect? Texans are voting in July for the first time in decades, the result of a lengthy federal court battle over new political districts that delayed the primary from March 6 to May 29. The unusual timing of the runoff in the middle of the summer — when many people are [...]
Your vote is worth 30 times what it usually is
A little runoff math from the Trib. It is easy to lament low voter turnout. Only 11 percent of the state’s voting age adults showed up for the May primaries. But look at their clout: Every actual voter was making a decision on behalf of nine people. In the runoff voting that starts next week [...]
Waiting for Rick (and Greg, and David)
Ross Ramsey breaks out his crystal ball and looks ahead to the 2014 election. Remember this: In his long history in state politics — closing in on three decades — [Rick] Perry has run for everything he said he was going to run for. Given his history, the safest assumption is that Perry will be [...]
California-style primaries
I’m deeply skeptical of this. In 2010, California voters approved getting rid of party-based primaries and adopting a “top-two” set-up, sometimes called a jungle primary. This month, the state tried the new primary model in which candidates of all parties ran at once on the same ballot. The top two vote-getters for statewide, congressional and [...]
Precinct analysis: GOP President and Senate in Harris County
Though I didn’t have one originally, I now have a canvass of the GOP primary in Harris County from this year. Since it’s impossible for me to have data and not do something with it, I’ve taken a look at the Presidential and Senate results for each of the State Rep districts. Here are the [...]
Precinct analysis: GOP Senate
I’m just going to give highlights from this one. I only have the Democratic canvass for Harris County, so this is county by county data only. You can see the spreadsheet here. – David Dewhurst had a majority of the vote in 148 counties. Unfortunately for him, the largest one was McLennan, with 20,947 total [...]