May 30th, 2017 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Introduction] Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room

[0:00:31 Jim] Thank you to all those Texans and hello, I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. This is the first of our summer podcasts on politics and government in Texas. I’m joined this week by my colleague Dr Joshua Blank, manager of polling and research at the Texas Politics Project. Thanks for coming, Josh.

[0:00:52 Josh] Thanks for having me.

[0:00:53 Jim] Well, if you’re watching Texas politics this week, you’re focused on the conclusion of the Texas Legislature, which just wrapped up its biennial session. Josh and I spend a lot of time watching this doing pulling for the Texas politics project, the UT Texas Tribune Poll and generally, just because we’re geeks about it, um and so everybody, now that the Legislature has wrapped up its business for now, there’s talk of a special session coming which we can touch on as we go through this. Um, we’re all thinking about what happened and where we arrived based on, you know, look, and based on where we started, if you go back to the beginning of the Legislature, we’re all talking about a handful of things that did in fact, come up. By and large, we’re talking about the budget because we went into the session with less money than we had had for the last couple of sessions due to the drop in in tax revenue in this state, we’re talking about the crisis that Child Protective Services and in foster care. The headlines in the fall, um, were dominated in this state periodically by this crisis in the child welfare system, on the failure really of foster care and Child protective services toe adequately, adequately take care of kids that were in their custody. We’re talking about sanctuary cities, the practice of cities declining or declining to enforce federal immigration law, or doing so on a limited basis. A lot of fights going on in the fall, and that came up in the national political climate. We’re talking about bathrooms, oddly enough, more specifically, the policies that cities were choosing to implement. Protecting transgender kids from, uh, discrimination, various kinds of attempts and also in public facilities. And we’re talking about property taxes, probably not something that touches directly. A lot of people that are gonna listen to this, but a big issue in the Republican Party. Um, that was on the agenda going in. And it did seem Josh, like we got for the most part, what we expected, at least in what was on the agenda.

[0:02:59 Josh] Yeah. I mean, if you think about it, you know, it’s not like 100% of the agenda is ever going to get covered, right? And so the issue is ends up being at the end. Well, what what actually did get covered? What? Didn’t. And then if it didn’t actually get addressed? Sort of. The question is, why is this something that you know most of time? The answer is, Well, it’s gonna take multiple sessions, you know, one obvious answer, and the other than the otherwise usually some sort of mixture of politics and and that’s where a lot people in a focusing on what didn’t happen, that people expected to have happen. But it seems like, you know, if you look at the list of what we got coming out right, the things that we’re really high profile is obviously there’s a 1,000,000 things that happened that you know only matter to very small industries or players within industries and small groups. But you think of the things get written about in the newspaper. You think about you know s before, which is the Sanctuary Cities legislation, which basically requires local police departments and to cooperate with immigration enforcement officials and also prohibits them from, ah, basically making rules that keep their officers from asking the immigration status of people that they detain, you know, basically up to a routine traffic stop. There were further abortion restrictions, which included requiring the burial of fetal remains from an abortion stillbirth basically any, you know, sort of medical medical establishment, not at home, but anywhere else.

[0:04:19 Jim] And that was not something that we heard it. I mean, abortion is always kind of bowing under is an issue because it’s so intensely important too right to a sector are a section of the population. We didn’t hear a ton about that.

[0:04:31 Josh] No, it wasn’t like we normal in previous sessions, we knew going in there’s like, these three or four things that we’re gonna try to do and didn’t really feel that way. This session of anything, that sort of early talk was pretty quiet. A lot of the early bills filed around abortion were sort of so beyond the pale of possible that you just sort of thought Okay, well, nothing’s gonna happen. But then they pass the sort of fetal remains Bill. They also passed a bill that ah, outlaws, you know, so called dismemberment abortions, which is, you know, sounds pretty awful. But it’s basically the most common practice of second trimester abortions. So they’ll a method of abortion, which is sort of a big deal. I mean, definitely guilty of some people. I’m actually a big deal. A lot of people

[0:05:09 Jim] that’s a big deal, in part because it’s it’s almost certainly going to be challenged in

[0:05:14 Josh] the

[0:05:14 Jim] courts and and is pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed

[0:05:18 Josh] as the field remains a bill. So there was voter I D Bill because Texas’s voter I. D law was struck down, and then the laws that were put in place for the 2016 election were basically extended. But then, on the sort of, you know, what was added to it was ah was a criminal penalty for basically people who said that they couldn’t reasonably obtain an I d to vote and then presented an alternative form like a bank, a bank statement or a paycheck or utility bill if you’re a registered voter. And you said that you didn’t have an idea and using these alternative forms, but you actually have an i. D. You could be sentenced up to two years in prison. So that was certain that was added to sort of what some would say it was. B to disincentivize people from using this route and basically keep the voter. I d. Ah, the thrust. An idea of the voter i d. Bill in place, you know, there were other sort of things that were also I mean, you know, in addition to all these sort of high profile things, there’s also the budget, which is the most high profile, the only, you know, piece of legislation, anything that required to pass and given what you were saying. The beginning about the fiscal environment, you know, is A is a very conservative budget and some reason in summer sex because it had to be, given that there are no opportunity or no likelihood of any new sources of revenue. But also, I mean, just in the particulars of the choices and sort of cuts to higher education. Um, you know, basically no increased spending on Medicaid due to, you know, you know, inflation, pretty conservative estimates about enrollment growth in public education. All things that everyone basically accepts means that when they come back in, you know, 2019 for the next session. The first thing that probably that they’re going to have to do is basically come up with the money. They’re not putting to the budget this time, right,

[0:06:54 Jim] And that, and that’s typical. There’s always kind of a hangover, and I was talking to a former appropriations chair in the final days of the session who was really kind of raising his eyebrows on one hand, saying, Sure, this always happens. You know, there’s always a 1,000,000,000 or so that’s there. You know that you have to cover when you come back. But this time it’s Karen to be guaranteed to be a lot more of that because of the way that they, you know, kept the budget, You know where where they wanted it to be without going into, like, the States. Kind of the rainy day fund is call a blocking into it, which is sort of states emergency savings account.

[0:07:33 Josh] Right? And then the other big issues that came out was a sort of the fixed to child protective services. CPS, which was a big issue going into the session. A lot of promise. CPS, you know, Children sleeping in offices, Children, you know who are, you know, we’re being reported as being endangered, not being seen within 24. 48 sometimes, you know, hours, sometimes longer. And the fix was sort of an interesting one because it was sort of a mixture of what we’re gonna put more money into, you know, sort of increase the pay of these people who have this kind of terrible job, try to hire new people. But we’re also gonna do is we’re gonna bring in a bunch of outside groups and not only we’re gonna bring in a bunch of outside groups to sort of help us implement this. We’re also going to try to make it easier for religious organization organizations. Teoh engage in this process and basically give them in exemptions to sort of fulfill their religious beliefs in helping this mission of CPS. And that was also serving underlying theme of this session in terms of finding little places wherever possible to create protections for basically, you know, basically religious views. Whether it be, you know, lawyers taking on clients or, you know, basically organizations helping Children. They were looking for different places where they could create serving exemption for religion. So the question and this is the result of the highest profile piece like bills that were passed. These are the things that people were talking about very openly that were sort of interesting to the public. And so the question that’s now bubbling around when you sort of look at that long list is you know, how conservative was this session, you know, Was this session significantly more conservative than previous sessions? Was it less conservative? Where was just actually, you know, the optics of it in the sense that you know the Senate under Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was so you know, both, you know, more conservative than it has been historically, but also ruled, much more will say efficiently.

[0:09:18 Jim] That’s a nice word.

[0:09:19 Josh] I’ll say efficiently that the session started. They were just passing conservative legislation you know very easily right at the outset. The house takes a slower pace. They always dio right, And it’s sort of the question became, you know, is the house actually bottling these things up? Are they sort of being strategic about it and that, you know, they don’t want to bring up some really fractious issues early on in the session that’s gonna break up you nose consensus on other issues. But then at the end of the session came it almost seemed like all these things just started rolling out and getting past. And so the question becomes, you know, again, was it that the session was just a conservative session? Was it the optics of its? Was it both? Yeah,

[0:09:56 Jim] I mean, I think I think the answer is is probably both. I mean, I think I would frame well, you know, it was a conservative session. There was almost a kind of what you might call, you know, Ah, pent up supply of conservatism out there. And that’s kind of standard for Texas and standard for these legislative sessions, at least in the recent decades. There’s always, you know, a bunch of stuff that’s there. There’s always advocates for it. And then there’s and I think, what’s different right now. What we’re seeing mature now is that there is an electoral environment out there in which you’ve got a bunch of, you know, legislators in the majority that are running primary, you know, first and foremost in Republican primaries, because the Democrats are not competitive in most of these districts. And so what you get is that in this particular circumstance, you know, start with the fiscal with the fiscal situation and the budget, because there’s not, you know, quote unquote extra money because the budget was tight and they went in knowing that there was gonna have to be some cutting if they weren’t gonna increase spending. And when you say, if our increased revenue and when I say this, you know that if tells you a lot because they weren’t going to do that. We know that right now. The conservative base line and the orientation in this state, which is time honored in part of Texas history, is that there’s reluctance to either raise taxes or find any other way of increasing revenue. And if you’re not going to do that and revenues down, there are gonna be cuts, and it’s gonna be a tight here

[0:11:30 Josh] in the flesh that out a bit more me. There’s two things about that one. It’s not as though Democrats in Texas are running around saying Raise my taxes. You know, I always, you know, let’s say one of the one of the things about being a liberal in Texas is you get to hold all the liberal positions and you don’t pay taxes for them, right? They’re free and that I think that’s under the Texans. Actually, in a lot of, you know, on average, kind of appreciate. But just to flush out your point, I mean, that is sort of a key thing here is that even conservatives want shiny things for their district’s right, And when you don’t have money and you can’t deliver those shiny things, you have to deliver something else, right?

[0:12:00 Jim] And the something else is a bunch of these other things that we talked about, you know? And I think you raise a good point. I mean, you could go through that list. You did a good job of laying out, no matter what they did. Certainly some of these provisions, like the restrictions on abortion, those air straight forward conservative items aimed at a conservative audience when you’re increasing restrictions on abortion and seeking to make it, you know, harder to obtain an abortion making abortion mawr rare by restricting access. That’s a conservative. That’s a conservative agenda item, and it’s pretty unambiguous. But if you look at, you know, other things like, you know, the CPS example is a really good one. You take on item where there was really I mean, you and I talked about this going into the session. It was one of the few areas where there was pretty much total consensus is on our friend, the writer Ross Ramsey, Texas Tribune, kind of put it early on. He’s like, for God’s sake, kids are dying right, which is literally true, and so you’re not going to get a it’s kind of hard to argue. Well, we need to spend a little less money, you know,

[0:13:08 Josh] right and even from and are pointy headed science e perspective. We’re like, Yeah, there’s no point in asking about this because everybody is against kids die

[0:13:15 Jim] that we did anyway And everybody you know was four reforming CPS, except that people have heard about it. They were overwhelmingly thought something needed to be done, but they found a way to make that consensus bill ah, vehicle for amore, for an item that is really on the conservative agenda in terms of putting religious organizations front and center in this or trying to and providing these additional protections that really plug into what cultural conservatives want and and just a flesh that out, you kind of laid it out. But what it means in practice. Certainly the critics see it this way, and I think that even the defenders of it would say this, that you can’t sort of keep religious organizations out of providing services even if they are, you know, likely to kind of incorporate kids into their religion into their religious beliefs or reject some kids or change their behavior based on their religious beliefs. And that’s, you know, that’s something that is, has been in the conservative either for a while.

[0:14:16 Josh] So I mean, what were things that means we kind of work through. This question was a more conservative. Sadly, the answer’s yes, and part of it is this sort through. At least three things going on here wanted sort of the natural pressures of the Republican primary electorate in conservative states. Probably the budgetary pressures and the inability to sort of satisfy, you know, constituent demands through spending, you know, even for conservatives. And probably three, you know, things were given a little bit short shrift to in some ways is you know, the lieutenant governor’s sort of largely successful attempts to take the agenda sort of by the Horns and sort of and use his power and let and, let’s say, in the Senate and in a more conservative Senate to really drive a lot of this stuff. But but here’s another thing. Do you think the national environment also played a role in This is

[0:15:01 Jim] what I think it did in critical areas, and one of the things we haven’t talked about that much US ways is the sanctuary city issue in which you know, I think the truck, you know, the Trump administration moved pretty early on to respond to, You know, it’s voter base in the same way that the Republican leadership in this state is responding to their voter base by engaging in a high visibility campaign against local officials who were not cooperating with federal immigration law by threatening and whether he can actually do this or not will be another issue. But by threatening to withhold federal funds, the cities that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration effort,

[0:15:40 Josh] that’s a good point. And it’s something I guess I haven’t thought about until now. I mean, for most of my life, I always find that it’s really difficult to either fall to follow both national politics and state politics closely. At the same time, you could do one or the other really well, unless you just basically and devote your whole day to it, you can vote. You can follow both, but I mean, when you think about it, you, the Texas Legislature comes after an election every year, right? So if you think that the legislature coming in in 2017 is almost surely reacting to the environment of the 2016 presidential election in a way that touches people a lot more than any. You know, House race, like statehouse race is gonna touch your average voter. And if that’s the issue and you know, in a Republican state that really, you know, the Donald Trump really honed in on early immigration writ large and then, you know, later sanctuary cities, you know, the criminal, you know, the criminality of people who are not in the country legally, right? And this is only the Legislature is sort of, you know, scratched at for a while. It almost, I mean, we kind of what it said. At some point, it’s clear that they’re gonna pass something, and it’s not surprising that was this. So, you

[0:16:41 Jim] know, I think you have to look at that immigrant. I mean, I think stepping back it’s easy, you know, having gone through and parse that all of these things that happen. It’s easy to forget that just how important immigration and border security are to the Republican electorate, both nationally but particularly in the state of Texas. And in a lot of ways, Texas was ahead of the curve on this in turn, you know. So in that sense, I’ve had a lot. I’ve had some reporters asked, while so did Trump kind of cause of this, and it’s kind of in a lot of ways it gets it backwards. Right in the Trump tapped into something that Texas politicians, particularly Texas Republican politicians, have been tapping into for a while. And so I think when we look forward to what I expect to see in the 2018 primary elections in which Republican legislators go back to their districts and want to take credit for the things that they’ve done, they’re going to take credit for immigration for the anti sanctuary cities law that we discussed and for holding the line on the border security on the border security budget right in which, you know, there were some talk about reducing spending, and in the end, they didn’t reduce it. They there was a big increase to some more than $800 billion for the biennium in 2015 there was some talk about saying Okay, we put a bunch of, you know, we bought cars and

[0:17:59 Josh] yeah, I have a really cool having these instead.

[0:18:01 Jim] Maybe we don’t need to spend as much this time, but they ultimately didn’t do that and everybody signed off. And that’s an interesting moment. The argument for reducing it was to go back to the national political situation, to expect that a Republican led Congress and Donald Trump, who campaigned on building a wall, would basically respond. Finally, to all the criticism out of Texas for the last decade that the federal government was failing on the border, they obviously are following that agenda. But they don’t trust enough to cut through.

[0:18:33 Josh] The other side of that is not even it’s not even just trust. It’s sort of, I mean, the other. The other angle. That is to say, you know, regardless of whether or not you know, let’s say the federal government is gonna move to increase border security funding in a way that could alleviate Texas responsibility, where legislators really going to take a vote reducing to reduce border security funding in this environment. And the answer is almost certainly no. And the question is almost will they ever. So here’s one more. One more thing about this session, then, you know, if we sort of look at the solar of long list of conservative legislation. We say this was a pretty, you know, certainly a lot of concern. Legislation came out this Legislature, and yet what were almost consistently talking about are the two things that weren’t packed. That didn’t happen, right? That didn’t happen, right? One is, you know, um, basically legislating regulating which bathrooms transgender Texans must use.

[0:19:24 Jim] Let’s just argue. Let’s just acknowledge how hard it is to describe that

[0:19:27 Josh] it’s very hard. It’s very hard to describe it very hard to pull that. And the other one was basically some semblance of what we call property tax reform. Not to be confused with property tax reduction because the Legislature does not control your property taxes. So they’re sort of all these various, you know, Rube Goldberg kind of contract legislative contraptions to try toe claims, some sort of effect on your property taxes. And neither of these two things passed in a lot of ways as we sit here in between. You know, the end of the legislative session and we were waiting for, you know, almost surely announcement of when a special session is gonna come from the Governor the question is, are both of these items gonna be on? Is one of these items gonna be on it? Our none of these items gets possible

[0:20:09 Jim] that neither of them will be on it. They have toe toe back full on this a little bit there, almost certainly gonna have to call a special session to go back and do some tech pass. A bill that technically is necessary for several state agencies to continue is part of the sunset process. Um, given that given that we know he’s the governor is almost certainly gonna have to call a special session for that. We then wonder what else the governor can put on the session. And despite what you may have heard from some other leaders in this state, the governor is the only person who can technically called a special session. If you read the newspapers on this and if you start following the news because you’re of these air in the class, what you’ll wind up finding out is that there’s a lot of pressure on the governor by the lieutenant governor to call a session, and the governor’s been pretty quick to reassert his authority and remind the lieutenant governor and everyone else that he’s the only one that has the constitutional power to call the special session.

[0:21:08 Josh] So I’m sure we’ll get ah lot. We’ll have a lot of time to talk about this issue again in the coming weeks. But is this focus on, you know, Bath? Given this long list of accomplishments that can conserve, legislators can take back for the Republican primary. You know, audience in the 2018 elections. Is this list of these sort of thes two other items? Is this really you know about the fact of the Legislature, you know, didn’t fulfill its conservative obligation? Or is this more about internal politics?

[0:21:38 Jim] Yeah, it feels more about internal politics between between the between different factions of the Republican Party, in particular between the leadership between the governor lieutenant governor, to a lesser extent, frankly, the speaker of the House. But I think we have to put an asterisk on that, and we will have a poll in the field very soon, and we’ll find out whether some of the attitudes that we found early in the session that suggested to us that, in fact regulating bathroom access was not particularly important, even to a big chunk of Republicans, was important to a narrow band, particularly evangelicals. Ah, but for the most part, people weren’t hankering for. I think we think people are still kind of making up their mind what they think about the issue. Overall, property taxes were more important to them. At the same time, there’s some risk for the Republican Party on this, because if property taxes are the focus of a special session, but you’re not actually lowering property taxes, it’s it’s tricky. So these are issues that will definitely be hearing more about in the coming weeks. We’ll be back sometimes the Josh, sometimes with others to talk about these and other things going on in Texas politics. So for now, Jim and Josh signing off and we’ll talk you against sin. Second Reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.