This doesn’t change anything, but we must fuss about it anyway.
In what appeared to be an attempt at a show of force, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick on Monday once again attacked claims that the proposed “bathroom bill” is bad for business in Texas.Flanked by nine Republican senators — including Senate Bill 6 author state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst — Patrick appeared emboldened by a PolitiFact Texas report that identified flaws in some of the numbers used by the Texas Association of Business to sound the alarm on legislation regulating bathroom use for transgender Texans.
While PolitiFact focused only on weaknesses in the report commissioned by the top business lobby group in the state and did not rule out any actual impact in Texas, Patrick insisted that PolitiFact’s analysis undermined the “bogus” report, which claimed that anti-LGBT legislation could cost the state up to $8.5 billion and thousands of jobs.
“Fearmongering is what that report was about,” Patrick told reporters on Tuesday. “There is no evidence whatsoever that the passage of Senate Bill 6 will have any economic impact in Texas.”
[…]
Ahead of Patrick’s news conference, the Texas Association of Business in a statement defended its report and claims about the economic fallout Texas could be setting itself up for if it passed anti-LGBT legislation similar to laws passed in other states.
Calling it “the tip of the potential iceberg for Texas,” the group highlighted reports indicating the NCAA is on the verge of withholding major events from North Carolina for several years — a move that could keep $250 million in “potential economic impact” from the state.
“The Texas Legislature can protect Texas families and businesses from unnecessary, costly legislation and protect our state from the wide-ranging harm that discriminatory legislation delivers,” the statement read.
Politifact didn’t dispute that there would be a negative economic impact on Texas if SB6 passed, they just didn’t think it would be as bad as the high end of the TAB study’s range (which to be sure is what generally got reported, because everyone loves big numbers) indicated. The study had also drawn from states like Indiana and Arizona, which passed (or in the case of Arizona, had vetoed by the Governor) legislation that didn’t go as far as North Carolina’s HB2 did. And as far as North Carolina goes, we’ve seen plenty of negative effect, more than enough to convince anyone not wearing Dan Patrick’s blinders that SB6 would be bad for Texas. The NCAA has certainly made it clear that there’s a price for passing bills like that, a message that was aimed a San Antonio and the 2018 Final Four as much as anyone. Quibble about the size of the number if you want, it still exists and we can all see it coming. And not to put too fine a point on it, but even if there were no bad economic effects to worry about, SB6 is still wrong and it will still hurt people. There’s no changing that. Texas Monthly, the Texas Observer, and the Dallas Observer have more.