Tuesday Roundup: It's Over

The 80th session of the Texas Legislature is over. As usual, it was too short for much substantive change to come forth for the state, and too long for those covering it (and probably those attending) to make it through without pulling their hair out.

No, Craddick didn't get overthrown. He had to throw out a few rules, years of precedent on parliamentary law, and two parliamentarians to save himself, but hey — at least he gets to hang on to the Speaker's apartment a little longer. Hey, don't knock that — those are pretty swank digs!

The blogosphere was full of people detailing Craddick's butchery of parliamentary law, as well as debating whether or not this whole walkout thing on Sunday night was a good idea.

Along with the coup attempt — and Craddick's chances for reelection, for that matter — other things that died in the House: SB 482, the energy regulation and rate cut bill, killed by Rep. Dunnam on a point of order after he pointed out that after the conference committee gutted it, it now neither added new regulatory powers nor actually gave anyone a rate cut (Dunnam's retort to Rep. King, who sponsored the bill and accused him of killing off the rate cut bill: ""Mr. King has had the gavel to do this for how many sessions? And rates have gone up and up and up. His attempt to deflect blame on somebody else is really pathetic"); the bill weakening the 10% rule for admission to state universities; and pretty much Rick Perry's entire agenda. That last article has a couple of interesting tidbits, including the lede quote by Rep. Hochberg, calling this "the tow-truck session: Most of what we have been doing is pulling things out of ditches," and noting that Dewhurst safeguarded $3 billion in property tax cuts for next session while passing a proposal to try and float a $3 billion bond for cancer research, effectively borrowing money so that he'd have a tax cut to point to after the '09 session before his 2010 bid for Governor. Hochberg with the quote again: "You don't borrow on your credit card when you've got cash, unless you want to pay more later." Just goes to show you that fiscal conservativism and fiscal responsibility are in no way connected.

The CHIP bill, rolling back the cuts to the program that had been made in 2003, passed — meaning 100,000 more kids get health insurance back. What else passed? ...um, the budget? And barely, at that — it had to dodge two filibuster threats and the ire of the House, which considered killing it just to protest Craddick. Now, tell me again how we got more business done with him in the speaker's chair? Because it seems to me that those crying for the House to "get back to business" would have been better served by Craddick being removed, a temporary speaker being selected for the rest of the session (with the tacit understanding that they would then not be considered for the position in '09, to assure that we don't waste time getting early points in on the race that should be happening in the next session), and the House going on with its business without walkouts, hour-long sequences of points of parliamentary inquiry, or motions that wouldn't be recognized.

Following up on the theme of fiscal conservatives having no grasp of fiscal responsibility, the Washing ton Post (friends of the show, if you'll recall) has a story on U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services turning down a plan that would get rid of the huge immigration backlogs and save the agency $350 million. Why would they do that? Reportedly, because "ending huge immigration backlogs nationwide would rob the agency of application and renewal fees that cover 20 percent of its $1.8 billion budget." No, seriously. "We can't save money, because then we won't have as much money!" The part that really kills me about this? 20 percent of $1.8 billion is $360 million. That would be $10 million more than they'd end up saving — that's less than 1 percent of their current budget. And after they did that, their backlog would be gone, so they wouldn't need the $1.8 billion budget anymore, now, would they? Sounds pretty responsible to me. As it apparently does to William Yates, ex-head of domestic operations for the agency, who called how they currently operate "a Ponzi scheme."

Finally today, we've been giving the Dallas mayoral race some coverage, so it seems fitting to point out this piece by the Dallas Morning News, comparing Oakley and Leppert. They note some similarities in plans, and some differences in philosophies (not surprising, as Oakley is a declared Democrat — "blue," as many of our readers would point out). Read, be informed, and remember to vote on June 16.