| Republicans hold 101 of the 150 seats in the Texas House of Representatives, giving them a supermajority that allows them to pass any legislation that doesn't, in some way, divide their caucus. All they have to do, ostensibly, is follow the rules. Texas House Republicans were caught earlier this week almost setting precedent that would have allowed the end of all public public testimony on legislation if it weren't for the swift actions of House Democrats to protect the institution of the House. The precedent they almost set was so far-reaching, in fact, that they made motions to go back and expunge the precedent and all conversations from the precedent ever being set from the House Journals. Based on a video released last week, it seems House Republicans have been caught, again, going too far too fast with their supermajority. State Representative Wayne Christian, Chairman of the powerful Texas Conservative Coalition and a prominent Tea Party member, posted a video conversation he had with the author of House Bill 15, the sonogram bill, boasting of having the legislation out of the Texas House before any votes on the House floor were ever taken. The photo below is of a video published onto Rep. Christian's YouTube channel on March 2: 
As you can see, the video was uploaded on March 2, the day the Texas House first brought up the bill but well before it ever passed. In fact, as of today (Saturday, March 5) the bill has only passed on Second Reading, and still has not yet passed off the floor of the Texas House. That vote is expected on Monday. Yet, this is what Chairman Christian says around the 1:00 minute mark of the video: "Today we are excited to have on our program Representative Sid Miller -- Chairman Sid Miller -- who has just passed a historic piece of legislation through the Texas House that is one of the Governor's emergency items. It's the 'sonogram bill' as it's known. And today, we're going to have Representative Sid Miller explain the details to us. Many of us in the pro-life organizations are very happy that Sid had the strength and the courage to pass..." Actually voting is just a trivial matter, I guess, which was made evident as House Republicans almost unilaterally voted down every amendment by House Democrats to improve the legislation, including amendments that would have exempted victims of rape or sexual assault, an amendment to protect the mother and the fetus as they travel through the parking lot to a physician's office, and even an amendment that would have provided a medical exemption from the sonogram for mothers and fathers that choose to terminate a pregnancy because they know the child would die upon delivery. Perhaps if House Republicans had paid attention to what they were voting on, and not just been on auto-pilot boasting about passage before any votes were cast, some better public policy would have been put into the legislation. Provided House Bill 15 passes the Texas House, the legislation would go to the Senate for consideration. The Senate passed a different version of the same issue on a Senate bill, so there's no bill in conference committee right now.** Eventually -- perhaps as part of the Monday meeting with Governor Perry the House Republican caucus is having -- it would be cleared up and we would know which bill the Governor will sign. Unless Governor Perry just signs it in the caucus meeting, since actually voting on legislation doesn't seem to be necessary for passage anymore. Previously on BOR: **UPDATE NOTE - The first two sentences of this paragraph were updated from the original published version of this post which stated, incorrectly, that the bill that came out of the House would then go to conference committee in the Senate. Since each chamber only voted on their own versions of the sonogram bill, one chamber still has to take up and consider one of the other's version before it could be sent to conference committee or the Governor's desk. |
