In some of the most candid public remarks to date Republican Representative Jim Pitts of Waxahachie indicated that if any savings is to come from Texas opting out of the federal Medicaid program that "we will have to throw some people out in the street." The full context of the entire quote is below thanks to the Texas Tribune:
Pitts told the crowd that the state is studying Medicaid and other forms of government-run health care with the idea of getting out of it. A man in the audience mentioned a friend on the program and asked whether lawmakers would "throw him out on the street."
"If we did exactly what we're doing today, we wouldn't be throwing him out on the street," Pitts answered. "But if we have any savings on getting out of Medicaid, we will have to throw some people out in the street. I'm not telling you that your friend would be, but the eligibility to receive state benefits will go down.
Well most of us knew what was coming, but to hear it so blatantly and unapologetically said in a less than heartfelt manner by Republican Pitts should give much reason for Texans to sweat these days. Moreover, Pitts said clearly your friend will not be thrown off if we keep things the way they are right now, but he would if we change things to the GOP way. Inciteful!
If a program such as Medicaid, which the federal government reimburses the state of Texas upwards of 60% of the total cost, is on the cutting block one can only imagine what other programs are next. Although Rick Perry and other Republicans continue to say that the state can handle the needs of those on Medicaid "by ourselves" he is unequivocally and deceptively lying. How can the state of Texas replace 60% of reimbursed funds from the federal government when the state already faces a $25 billion dollar shortfall? The answer is they can't, and they have no intention to even try. Since the 1980's it has been the mission of Republicans to end programs such as Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and others and they fully intend to use an internally perceived "election mandate" to do exactly that. The new GOP extreme machine fully intends to throw as many people into the streets as possible with a slash and burn approach to governing that has no mercy.
I don't believe this is the mandate that voters truly went to the polls and voted for, I believe it is a dramatic stretch on the part of Republicans to believe that is the case; however, I'm not surprised that Republicans have manifested the election results to be a full-fledged dismantling of state and federal government of the likes we have never, ever seen before.
The new GOP extreme machine may believe their mandate will be well received by Texans, but as the microscope magnifies the extent of this destructive, slash and burn approach to governing the tide will quickly turn back.
Facing an $18 billion dollar budget shortfall in the upcoming legislative session, House Republicans are coming to the realization that federal stimulus dollars won't help them balance the budget this time, and that perhaps other solutions will have to surface to fix the problem that more than a decade of GOP leadership in Texas has created. To that end, legislative Republicans are considering legalized gambling as a way to increase revenue.
"Gambling could help us on our budget," said Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, after his Appropriations Committee heard sobering testimony from revenue and budget experts this morning. "I'm going to look at every revenue enhancer that we can get," Pitts said. "If you go across the border [to] Oklahoma and Louisiana, you're going to see Texas cars, and we need to grab that money."
You don't say? I just couldn't believe that so many Texans, in the Bible belt, would cross the borders of New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Louisiana to gamble--spending billions of dollars in neighboring states when such dollars could be spent right here in the Lone Star State. Who would have thought that? Welcome to reality, Texas GOP.
Given that Republican Speaker of the House Joe Strauss has hemmed in House budget writers from even considering new taxes to close the budget shortfall, what exactly are legislators supposed to consider outside of legalized gambling? Rick Perry decided to hem the legislature in even more by declaring his opposition today to legalize gambling.
"The Texas Legislature may find that it is something they're interested in," Perry said during a visit to Richardson. "I would highly recommend they don't send it to my desk."
Rick Perry had no problem raising taxes on small businesses after rejecting federal stimulus dollars to Texas' unemployment trust fund. I guess Joe Strauss doesn't mind taxes being raised if it is Rick Perry doing it; meanwhile, the legislature is forced to figure out ways to balance the budget after politically expedient decisions are made for the good of primary campaigning a la Perry vs Hutchison.
It may be politically popular right now to publicly declare "no new taxes" as Strauss has done, or even develop fictional accounts of a low-tax resume such as Perry, but the fact is that for state government to provide even the most basic of services to Texans then some sort of viable solution must be pursued or state services will be cut dramatically farther than they are right now. Taxes, despite misinformation to the contrary, have never been lower than they are right now. Pandering to Tea Party activists, who represent about 15% of the voting population, and not representing the interests of mainstream voters, or the needs of Texas as a state, is political pandering at your own peril.
The day after far right wing yelled at government for spending their taxes, the Texas House will debate a massive supplemental appropriation. The fiscal note on the item is $3,298,596,795. Yep, that is $3.3 billion dollars according to the fiscal note.
As Jason Embry points out, this will be the single most important vote on the House floor to date (of course, the House is voting on Senate Bill 1, a.k.a the budget, tomorrow).
The highlights on the bill include:
The bill includes more than $3 billion in federal stimulus dollars, including $1.6 billion for Medicaid, $758 million for education and $662 million for transportation. The bill also includes $300 million in general revenue for the UT Medical Branch at Galveston and more than $160 million for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
The House convenes at 10 a.m. today and there are only 5 bills on the floor today. House Bill 4586, the supplemental appropriation, will take the bulk of the time.
To read everything the bill is intended to do, read the House Bill analysis here, and please feel free to watch the debate here and keep tabs of the debate in the comments.
It will be interesting to see if the far right votes against this bill or if yesterday was just a press stunt as so many have speculated.
The "No" votes were Republicans Warren Chisum of Pampa, Wayne Christian of Tyler, Joe Crabb of Atascocita, Charlie Howard of Sugar Land and Sid Miller of Stephenville.
None of these elected were involved in yesterdays press stunt. In addition, none of the House members involved in the press stunt yesterday voted against using federal money in Texas. Interesting...
The appointments (.doc) to the Appropriations subcommittees have been announced by Chairman Jim Pitts. As we could have expected, there is a Republican split.
There are five committee members on each of the seven subcommittees. Republicans have 3-2 majorities on five of the committees. Democrats have the majority on the subcommittees for Hurricane Appropriations and Health & Human Services appropriations.
The chairmanships are more equally split, with Republicans gaining four of the chairmanships and Democrats gaining 3. And this is Appropriations, so Pitts couldn't have regulated Democrats to the "worse" chair jobs if he wanted to. The following is the list of chairs:
General Government
Otto - R
Health & Human Services
Zerwas - R
Education
Hochberg - D
Criminal Justice
Riddle - R
Business and Economic Development
Giddings - D
Hurricane
Eiland - D
Stimulus
Crownover - R
I can't say I'm disappointed with most of the chairperson appointments. Eiland and Hochberg are obvious and great choices to lead their respective subcommittees. The one that might worry me is Debbie Riddle at Criminal Justice. Our Criminal Justice system has a lot of problems, and I don't think a radical conservative (or liberal, for that matter) is the type of person you want leading the efforts to fix it.
Jim Pitts moves to vacate the chair, Sylvester Turner refuses to accept the motion.
Hartnett moves to allow the Speaker to ignore all future parliamentary inquiries. Turner takes that ruling under advisement.
Craddick is nowhere to be found...
UPDATE: The strategy is clear. Ignore it and maybe it will go away. So far, Craddick, Turner, and Gattis have refused to accept any motion from the back mic. They are using an insane interpretation of rule 5 section 24 and saying the Chair has absolute and unappealable authority.
As the day goes on, Merritt has a point of order in queue even though Speaker Keel (I mean, Turner) will not rule on it. The point of order is still absolutely there and it puts every bill that comes up at risk.
(UPDATE: Question on process and timing were asked in the Comments. I've tried to answer for those watching this train wreck for entertainment. Glen Maxey, former member, with eyes averted from the carnage. - promoted by Glen Maxey)
Rep. Todd Smitth (R-Tarrant) filed House Resolution 2671 today, which outlines the procedures by which a Speakers race would occur.
A post in yesterday's Texas Politics blog from the Houston Chronicle explains:
AP photographer Harry Cabluck was stalking the four candidates for speaker today as they huddled in the back of the House chamber's center aisle.
Suddenly they turned on Cabluck. Reps. Brian McCall, Jim Pitts and Jim Keffer all began playing rock, paper scissors as Rep. Fred Hill watched. The implication was that they were trying to decide which one would stand alone against incumbent Speaker Tom Craddick in the insurrection. But Hill explained it differently.
"Those guys were doing rock, paper, scissors for speaker pro tem, because I'm going to be speaker," Hill joked.
(Rep. Fred Hill has also announced. - promoted by Burnt Orange Report)
State Representative Brian McCall has filed for Speaker of the Texas House, according to a news item on Quorum Report. Rep. McCall joins Rep. Jim Pitts, who filed yesterday, and Rep. Jim Keffer as the third Republican who has shown intentions to replace Speaker Tom Craddick.
**UPDATE** The Chron blog is reporting that Rep. Fred Hill has also announced that he is filing for Speaker.
Rep. Jim Pitts, who unsuccessfully ran against Speaker Craddick at the start of the 80th Regular Session for Speaker, has filed to run this session. According to the AP story:
Rep. Jim Pitts of Waxahachie filed his candidacy with the state Ethics Commission for a term to begin if Craddick is unseated, a spokesman for the commission said.
([I managed to inadvertantly make my post too early, and didn't intend to knock Sam's post from the top spot.—VL] - promoted by Vince Leibowitz)
Responding to Representative Jim Pitts' letter of complaint concerning Committee Assignments, Speaker Craddick's office released this statement:
"Rep. Pitts met and talked with Speaker Craddick several times about his committee assignments. Speaker Craddick offered Rep. Pitts a seat on the Appropriations Committee. Rep. Pitts declined that offer. His statements to the contrary are not an accurate reflection of the exchanges between the two of them."
