(I wanted to make sure people had a chance to see this excellent interview with the next Governor of Texas, I mean, State Senator Van de Putte. - promoted by Karl-Thomas Musselman)
Ed. Note: The first half of the interview is policy-based, because I think you can learn more about an elected official from how they approach policy than anything else. However, I also know what most readers want. To read the political side of the interview -- and her answers to the 2010 statewide questions -- go to the second half of the interview immediately by clicking here. UPDATE: Follow Senator Van de Putte on twitter: http://twitter.com/leticiavdp Texas State Senator Leticia Van de Putte made a big splash a couple weeks ago with an incredible profile in the San Antonio Current, and a subsequent post here on BOR by regular reader and Bastrop precinct chair Robert Ryland making the case for why Leticia Van de Putte she should be Governor generated dozens of comments from the community. As of this posting, a Facebook group that wants to draft Senator Van de Putte for Governor had over 530 members. Senator Van de Putte's record on progressive issues lends credence to the attention she has received. A former President of the National Conference of State Legislators, Senator Van de Putte received her most recent bit of national attention as Co-Chair of the Democratic National Committee Convention in Colorado last summer. A little over a year ago, she gave the Spanish State of the Union response. She is the current and long-standing leader of the Texas Senate Democratic Caucus, a group that was thrust into the national spotlight in 2003 when she helped lead her colleagues to New Mexico for a month to help fight Tom Delay's unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting map. Needless to say, Senator Leticia Van de Putte has been a hot topic among Texas Democrats over the past few weeks. I had a chance to interview Senator Van de Putte last Friday about the current legislative session, as well as what the political future may hold for her and the Democratic Party. Read the full transcript below. --------------------------------------- Phillip Martin: It seems you've been quite busy lately. How has the last week been in the spotlight? Senator Van de Putte: We had an incredible week in the State Senate. Things seem to be moving at a very quick pace, particularly at this time in the Legislature. Right now we want to make sure that all of the stimulus funding that is coming to our state and that will flow through the state budget gets utilized for its purposes. We're particularly pleased that we've been able to raise the importance of the unemployment insurance issue, so we can make sure that $540 million goes to workers that are already affected by the downturn of the economy. I've read that Governor Perry changed the rules surrounding the unemployment fund, right? Governor Perry got convinced by some of his business supporters that they needed to give relief to businesses, so they turned back the rate by which businesses pay into the unemployment fund. At the time, the unemployment insurance fund looked pretty solid. It was the wrong move, because as the downturn occurred nationally, Texas wasn't immune. Now, we find ourselves hundreds of millions of dollars short because Governor Perry, basically, decided to give it back. However, the stimulus money that has been passed by the current administration would allow for us to draw down to the state an additional $540 million for workers who have lost their jobs. We had been hearing this rhetoric from Tom Pauken -- the former Chair of the Republican Party of Texas who is now Chair of the Texas Workforce Commission -- that he and Governor Perry didn't want to accept this money. They were saying that there were strings attached and this was not something we needed to burden Texas employers with. Nothing could be further from the truth. What about the people who have already lost their jobs? We are very happy that on record this week Senator Kirk Watson -- who sits on the Senate Nominations Committee -- got Tom Pauken to publicly recognize the fact that, yes, we absolutely need these dollars and we need to change the law in the state of Texas to be able to get those stimulus dollars to the state of Texas. With the change in law, you're referring -- I'd presume -- to the legislation you've filed? Yes. And what's interesting is that Senator Lucio and I have been filing these bills year after year, because the policies are inherently unfair to workers. There's a trio of bills that we're looking at, and we've asked Governor Perry to put them on the special call for the Session. As soon as we pass these bills, we're eligible for the stimulus money. There are a lot of folks that will lose their jobs this summer, unfortunately, and on into the fall. We haven't gotten to the worst of this economy. But we know there is money to start doing something now, and that's what the legislation is trying to do. I know that we've seen some figures about full-time workers that have lost their jobs, but one of the growing stories across the country is the large number of part-time workers that are losing their jobs. Can you give me a sense of how many part-time workers have lost their jobs, or if there has been a growing rate in the number of reduced hours worked here in Texas by part-time, or even full-time, workers?
Well, Texas is one of the few states that does not allow part-time workers to collect unemployment insurance, so we don't have solid data on that. The bill I have filed would allow part-time workers to file unemployment insurance claims and, if they qualify, draw down some of those funds. While we don't know the statistics, though, we do know that in the down turned economy, the first to be told that they don't need to come to work the next day are part-time workers. There are three classes of people that are mainly part-time workers. First, our young students who are either in high school or in college, but particularly college-age students. The second are working women with young children -- young moms that will work part-time, juggling family and home. The third are our senior citizens, who may be on a fixed income but still need that extra cash coming into their monthly pockets. When we don't offer unemployment benefits to part-time workers, the ones who are affected our students, seniors, and working moms. These are folks who lost their jobs -- through no fault of their own -- but because of the downturn of the national economy and the state economy, these groups are having to go to food banks, they're going to have to ask their sisters to pay for the utilities...They're hurting, and we can only surmise that it's because they've lost the only job they have, even if it's a part-time job. Ed. note: There is much, much more with Senator Van de Putte below the fold -- including her response to whether or not she'd run for Governor, what kind of infrastructure needs to be in place for a Democrat to win statewide, and her reaction to last week's Perry vs. Hutchison poll numbers. Click "There's More" to continue reading...
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