It started Monday when Senate Finance Chair Sen. Steve Ogden said he might pull same Rainy Day funds out of the budget in order to get more Republican (read: Dan Patrick) support for it. After some discussion about alternate ways of incorporating Rainy Day funds and some griping about the Comptroller, CSHB1 was brought up for debate about suspending the rules on Tuesday afternoon. The Trib liveblogged the action, in which Ogden laid out the game plan:
Ogden started by telling lawmakers that if they vote to suspend — to take up the budget bill for debate — he’ll take out the provision that would dip into Rainy Day Funds if state revenue comes up short. He’d reduce Medicaid spending by $1.25 billion (more on that in a second), and would include a contingent appropriation equivalent to a 1.2 percent across-the-board spending increase in everything except public education and debt services.
The across-the-board cuts would take place if the comptroller says the money isn’t available; if it is, those cuts won’t happen.
And the Medicaid cuts are a sleight of hand: Lawmakers will be back in January 2013 and if Medicaid comes up short — by, say, $1.25 billion — they’ll take care of it then. In fact, the budget without any changes pushes $3 billion in Medicaid spending off for the next Legislature to deal with.
That was not acceptable to Democrats, and after three hours the vote to suspend fell short, 19-12, on straight party lines. But as Nate Blakeslee noted, the Republicans have another card to play.
Under the Senate rules, Wednesdays are “House bill days” in which House bills already on the calendar may be brought up for consideration without suspending the regular order of business—that is, without a two-thirds vote of the senators present. You do have to take the House bills in the order they currently appear on the calendar. The next House bill on the Senate’s official Regular Order of Business calendar—that green book you see floating around the Senate that nobody ever looks at because it is usually totally irrelevant–is HB 1, the budget. Tomorrow is a Wednesday.
It’s clear that this is what will happen today.
Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, said the decision before the senators is not about the budget but whether “to change the whole nature of how things operate here.”
Ogden agreed that if he could not get the 21 votes needed today, Senate traditions were at risk.
“That is why I have worked so hard and done everything that I could possibly think of to get to 21 votes,” Ogden said.
But Ogden pointedly noted that “we were not sent down here to preserve the two-thirds rule. We were sent down here to govern.”
“People of the state of Texas don’t give a diddly about the two-thirds rule,” he said.
I do agree with Sen. Ogden about that. People for the most part don’t know or care about procedural minutiae. I for one am not going to defend any supermajority requirements, not after all the crap we saw in the US Senate these past two years. Let the debate happen, and if in the end it passes on another straight party vote, as was the case in the House, then so be it. If this is what the Republicans want, if this is what they think they were elected to do, then let them do it. I’m happy to have that debate. There was some speculation earlier in the week that Democrats, on the House side at least, were hoping for Senate budget talks to break down and force a special session, but politically speaking this does nearly the same thing.
So we’ll see where it goes from here. Robert Miller thinks this is the demise of the Senate’s 2/3 rule, and I think he’s right. Jason Embry had wondered why conservative activists hadn’t been rebelling against it before; now they may not have to. What I know is that ownership of all of the bad effects of the budget is now fully in the Republicans’ hands. Let’s get the next election season started, shall we? A statement from Sen. Kirk Watson is here, a statement from the Texas AFL-CIO is here, and a letter to Sen. Wendy Davis from the Legislative Budget Board about her request “regarding historical funding of student enrollment growth in the Foundation School Program” is beneath the fold.
UPDATE: EoW and the Trib have more.
M E M O R A N D U M
TO: Senator Wendy Davis
FROM: Jennifer Schiess
DATE: April 29, 2011
SUBJECT: Request regarding historical funding of student enrollment growth in the Foundation School Program
In a letter dated April 28, 2011, you requested information regarding whether or not the state has historically funded enrollment growth in the Foundation School Program.
Based on our analysis of state appropriations, we find that for the last 27 years, the state has appropriated sufficient funds to fully fund state obligations, including enrollment growth, under the school finance formulas in effect at the time of appropriation. This analysis should not be interpreted to imply that at any point prior to the 1984-85 biennium the state failed to meet this obligation. Data required for analysis going further back is simply not readily available for a timely response.
Please note that this analysis is based on state appropriations, which are necessarily made based on estimates of student enrollment growth and other factors and is not reflective of the degree to which state payments did or did not ultimately meet actual obligations. However, the appropriations basis can be interpreted as a measure of legislative intent with regard to meeting the state’s statutory obligations under the Foundation School Program.
Please let me know if you have questions or need additional information.
cc. Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst
John Opperman
Caasi Lamb
Sarah Hicks
John O’Brien
Ursula Parks
Wayne Pulver
John McGeady
Janét Spurgin
Bradley Domangue
Kimberly Wheeler
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