April 11th, 2023 – Let’s Talk About Uncertainty

[00:00:00] Intro: 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. Sir, I’ll 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.

[00:00:24] Intro: At what point must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be re. Over the male colleagues in the room

[00:00:34] Jim Henson: and welcome back to the second Reading podcast. I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin. Glad to be joined again today by Josh Blank, research Director of the Texas Politics Project. How are we doing over there, parent? I’m,

[00:00:50] Josh Blank: I’m doing okay. You know, you say that, I’ve been talking to a lot of parents saying school’s almost.

[00:00:53] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, it’s not, it’s not, but we’re, we’re in the home stretch. You can feel it. You can feel it out there. You can feel it from the kids. You know what

[00:00:59] Jim Henson: I heard when you said,

[00:01:01] Josh Blank: Uhhuh. Yeah, exactly. That’s all

[00:01:05] Jim Henson: that, that’s sort of an Easter egg. We were talking about the Peanuts comic strip and how, you know, kids hear adults and you know, also noting that adults sometimes hear each other the same way more often than you think.

[00:01:15] Jim Henson: Yeah. It’s, it’s not something that happened to us, it’s something that we learned. I was

[00:01:20] Josh Blank: gonna say, and that’s a good transition, open house.

[00:01:22] Jim Henson: So, uh, you know, after a busy weekend in Texas, politics last week and another one ongoing as, as we record this, uh, late in the morning on Tuesday, um, you know, I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of where we are in the session.

[00:01:39] Jim Henson: But from a very specific perspective, that is, you know, you and I, Josh, have talked a lot about. You know, throughout the process, and this has to do with the way we do our jobs and, you know, answering the phone or responding to texts from reporters. But there’s a lot of, you know, okay, what’s gonna happen?

[00:01:56] Jim Henson: Yeah. Or what do you think’s gonna happen? Or, you know, does this have a chance? You know, like, you know, and, and look, that’s a, you know, the flip side of what, the way we want to kind of frame this today is. You know, nobody really wants to report on what might happen. Right, right, right. Um, so, so, so, so in a lot of ways, uh, you know, the theme today or is uncertainty Right.

[00:02:19] Jim Henson: You know, and, and you know, backing up a little bit and thinking about. You know, I think, you know, look, thinking about uncertainty, I think it’s easy for us to lapse, as we were talking about in the, in the run up to this. So right before we turn the mm-hmm. The record, the recording mach machine on, um, you know, to think about this as a, in principle and in the abstract, and I think we’ll do some of that, you know, but I mean, but it’s also, I, I think important and kind of what we’re getting at today is to talk about why uncertainty should be expected.

[00:02:53] Jim Henson: Mm. You know, there’s a little bit of this that I will, will inevitably say why we should expect uncertainty to be a condition of political events and life. Right. Um, but also more specific to where we are at this point in the session. Mm-hmm. Right. I mean, you know, I mean, the questions are, are. Multiple right now, all of which, you know, are pretty, you know, are plagued by uncertainty.

[00:03:17] Jim Henson: Which of the flag priorities, you know, among the big three will pass and, and what won’t? Uh, what’s the balance of power between the big three, uh, you know, an unstable triangle if ever there was one. Yeah. Um, just cuz we’ve seen more unstable ones doesn’t mean this one is not unstable too, right. Um, You know, in, in a more concrete way for people that are trying to make plans, what issues, you know, might lead the governor to call a special session?

[00:03:45] Jim Henson: Or what situations, um, you know, what situations might lead the lieutenant Governor to carry through on his threat? And I’ll put it more institutionally, accurately than he did. Yeah. To put pressure on the house and the governor and, and in a way that might lead to a special session. You know, and kind of what, you know, what is, what we’re looking at right now.

[00:04:08] Jim Henson: Tell us about the state of the play and, and how, in other words, how this, how will this shake out? What will this tell us about the state of play and the state as we go into the next election cycle? Mm-hmm. Um, and then of course, and it’s easy to, you know, it’s easy to, to lose charge of this, you know, what does this portend for everyone else?

[00:04:27] Jim Henson: Right? Right. For the non, you know, for the non-direct participants in the. In the process, what does it portend for? Life in the state. Mm-hmm. I think, you know, that sounds like a broad kind of loosey-goosey description or question, but it’s, I I think it’s a question that is very much in the air as we consider the cumulative effect of a lot of the very impactful legislation that was passed last session and where the current energy, particularly on the right end of the Republican party, Where that might be.

[00:05:02] Jim Henson: I think we know where it is and where it might push the state in this session. And I think all of that really, that’s already bleeding into the sources of uncertainty. But just, you know, for the mechanics of the process at this stage, committees are still very active, you know, but the house is still working at a.

[00:05:19] Jim Henson: Fairly leisurely pace. Um, not to, you know, not to fall into the Lieutenant Governor’s messaging, but, you know, we haven’t had huge calendars in the house. Actually, I was looking today before we came up here as the, as the house was gaveling in, and there’s actually a longer calendar in the house today, but there’s also more committee meetings going on.

[00:05:38] Jim Henson: But nonetheless, the house is still working at a fairly leisurely pace at bringing things to the floor. They’re not, we expect that out of the. Yeah, we, we should expect that, um, just as we should expect, you know, the Senate to criticize it. So, you know, given like that part, even, even just that narrow band of the process, that very kind of nuts and bolts kind of, yeah, there’s still a ton of committee hearings.

[00:06:03] Jim Henson: The pace of bills is uneven. There’s not a lot of bills moving yet, you know, in the house. Although there will be. You know, the course of things is very un under determined at this point in the process.

[00:06:16] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think that’s a hundred percent right. And I think, you know, it’s one of those things that it’s natural as just human beings to, to seek out certainty, to, to look for information that confirms what you already know or expect or think is going to have or want or want.

[00:06:29] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You know, and I think, you know, part of, you know, our approach to this and, and part of the reason to sort of, you know, the way that we’re thinking about this is that, you know, and I say, To some people sometimes, like the least sexy thing about being a quote unquote expert is the fact that being an expert means you have to be honest with yourself about what you don’t know, right?

[00:06:48] Josh Blank: Furthermore, you know, the other sort of piece about, I think being an expert isn’t running away from uncertainty, which I think is very natural. I mean, honestly, like that’s the natural reaction to uncertainty. It’s anxiety and then you run, you move away from that. That’s, you know, definitional. But I think when you’re in the sort of the position of trying to be honest about what’s going on, you actually have to try to look at that uncertainty and actually start to kind of accumulate.

[00:07:09] Josh Blank: Think about how the different uncertainties work with each other, and what that does is that actually gets you to a much more, I would say, nuanced, maybe less helpful, maybe more helpful, but usually much more nuanced understanding. About through these questions of what is going to happen, what is not gonna happen.

[00:07:25] Josh Blank: Because as an expert, I think people will roll their eyes when you say, well, it depends. Yeah, and they do. And I understand why, again, we’re, you know, fair enough, fair enough. But the reality is, is you know, that it depends on what question is a, is a big question. And actually, because the legislature. Meets every two years because, you know, we get to watch Yeah, these various players, you know, uh, especially the big three, engage in sort of their political agenda.

[00:07:48] Josh Blank: Watch them engage in the electoral agenda. See the way these things are interacting, we get to look at the way the public opinion isn’t interacting with those things. You know, what you’re fi you know what, by looking at these sort of questions about, you know, sort of what are the inputs to the uncertain, you know, to these bits of uncertainty, it can actually get us a little bit further along in understanding I.

[00:08:06] Josh Blank: What is and isn’t gonna happen, even if we can’t say this is definitely gonna happen, or this is definitely not gonna be Yeah, this’ll happen if, and, and the if becomes, what are we looking at? Well, and I think, what are the issues here

[00:08:17] Jim Henson: that, you know? Yeah. And I think navigating that is really, you know, it, you know, you’re, if you’re somebody that’s whose job is to try to figure this out without, you know, your goal being to shape the outcome right.

[00:08:32] Jim Henson: The dynamic of the people that are involved, whose job it is to shape the outcome. Mm-hmm. You know, have different, you know, incentives for presenting certainty or uncertainties as they try to shape the debate and they try to shape the actual

[00:08:44] Josh Blank: process. Right. But I would say that, you know, that may be true, but it doesn’t change the underlying nature of a lot of the uncertainty.

[00:08:51] Josh Blank: No, no.

[00:08:52] Jim Henson: I’m not saying it changes. What I am saying is that, It’s one more thing to have to navigate, right? As you are saying, well, it’s uncertain cuz you know, I mean, somebody says, well, so-and-so says it’s gonna

[00:09:02] Josh Blank: happen. Yeah, no, and I, and I’m not disagreeing. What I’m actually saying is that I think, you know, what may, you know, it seems to me that the most, you know, effective advocates in those space are the, are probably the people who can manage, incorporate, and then act on more sources of uncertainty and more information.

[00:09:18] Josh Blank: Right. And the right source and the right mix of sources of uncertainty and information to basically make a decision in what. It, sorry. To be an uncertain environment. Right, right.

[00:09:27] Jim Henson: Yeah. Okay. So we can, we can lapse into abstraction. So let’s get, let’s get a little, like a, a little more concrete. So look a little bit, the sources of this uncertainty are, you know, I mean you can put ’em in different buckets, you know, look, some of this I think, and, and I think this is a good basic thing to remember, and this is kind of a.

[00:09:46] Jim Henson: You know, government 3 0 6 kind of factor. But you know, you know, the process is designed to create some uncertainty. Yeah. Right. And by the process and in particular the legislative process, I mean, the process is designed to make it hard to pass bills. Mm-hmm. Um, You know, the process also has this, this throttling of the pace of con of, of consideration of legislation.

[00:10:11] Jim Henson: Um, you know, this is a big theme when we have our, our intern training seminar at the beginning of every session. Um, you know, this is almost like one of the predominant themes when we have the interns that come participate in a conversation with the parliamentarians. The Constitutional order of business.

[00:10:31] Jim Henson: I mean, I think it was Hugh Brady, the the, the what? The co parliamentarian in the house who kind of just said, I love the constitutional order of business, which was very unbrand. You know, he’s on the right, he’s on the right job. Right. And you know, the, you know, the, the amusingly enough, the, the parliamentarian of the Senate, not as in love with the constitutional order business.

[00:10:53] Jim Henson: Not hostile, but perhaps just, you know, a friend me. Um, I’m gonna get in trouble for saying that maybe. Well, they’re coworker, they’re coworkers, but nonetheless, I mean, there is a structure to the way that legislation moves. We’ve talked about it in here before. I have to over elaborate. You know, when Bill, when the committees can start meeting after 30 days, you can’t start, you know, bills can’t move to the floor until the the sixth, until I this after the 60th day, and so, You know, there is the structure that throttles the process and it adds to this uncertainty because, you know, in this podcast 60 days ago, we were sitting around going, yeah, well this is where not much is going on.

[00:11:30] Jim Henson: Right. And so we’re in the midst of this, you know, and then there’s, you know, the ins, the general system of separation of powers and checks and balances is again, designed to not make this a straightforward process, to not make it easy to pass bills and, and from one branch to not dominate. And I think in this circumstance right now, we’re seeing.

[00:11:50] Jim Henson: A lot of tremors in those principles, both in the state and nationally. Yeah. You know, we could, you know, maybe we’ll come around to examples, but then, you know, and then, and then finally in Texas, of course the constrained timeframe, you know, this just, you know, I mean, you know, you had sort of, we were talk, you know, as we discussed this before, it forces trade, trade-offs, as you were saying.

[00:12:10] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean,

[00:12:10] Josh Blank: and what’s interesting is, you know, this is not unique to Texas, right? I mean, we talk about Yeah. You know, the federal government has, you know, again, a lot of. Same features in terms of, you know, again, the by camera legislature, the multiple branches. Right, right. You know, all these things that make it harder to pass bills than pass bills.

[00:12:25] Josh Blank: You

[00:12:25] Jim Henson: have to pass a bill within a given legislative session. You have to start over. If it doesn’t

[00:12:28] Josh Blank: pass, why is it, and actually the Texas makes all those things harder because it constraints things in addition

[00:12:33] Jim Henson: to that more, yeah, more compressed and more both more compressed and more infrequent.

[00:12:36] Josh Blank: Right. And more constrained within the compression.

[00:12:38] Josh Blank: Right. And so within all that Exactly. It’s one of those things where even though it’s not unique to the Texas system, the Texas system, I mean, in some ways, you know, you could flip it around and say, boy, it’s amazing they do as much as they do. Yeah. Right.

[00:12:48] Jim Henson: Um, yeah. And, and look, and so, you know, given all that and, and a little bit closer to the moment we’re in, you know, uh, what falls out of that in terms of thinking about where we are here in early, turning to mid-April.

[00:13:02] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, remember the calendar, we’re still. A little less than a month away, and from the last day for house committees to report house bills in order to, to make the deadline for the last house bill calendar,

[00:13:16] Josh Blank: which is a necessary step in

[00:13:17] Jim Henson: the process. Right. Which is part of what we’re talking about.

[00:13:19] Jim Henson: Right. And so, you know, I, you know, in terms of the way we frame this, I don’t want to overstate, we, we still haven’t hit the dog days of floor debate in either chamber. Right. You know, A couple of latest, you know, nights in the Senate so far where, you know, I think the lieutenant Governor and the leadership there wanted to, well, or why, you know, I just strike the leadership where the lieutenant Governor wanted to move some things.

[00:13:42] Jim Henson: You know, pretty fast before they got outta town for Easter and wants to stay ahead of the house. Yeah. You know? You know. So just as it was too early a couple of months ago to be thinking Right. You know, that just because of Bill got filed, it was gonna move and we kind of beat that horse in here for a couple of podcasts.

[00:14:00] Jim Henson: At this point. It’s still too soon to make too many judgements about what won’t move. I mean, look, something that hasn’t been referred to committee yet, or Yeah. You know, there’s some things out there that we can begin to winnow. But you know, it’s still premature to be sure about what is gonna move and what isn’t.

[00:14:18] Jim Henson: In a lot of cases now, you know, some things are moving, so, right. Those things get bracketed, and so it’s too early to draw too many conclusions about winners and losers, right? I mean, yeah. Now that points us directly to the political factors at play. Now this is obviously because of the contingency. A really big category.

[00:14:39] Jim Henson: You could say so, right? I mean, we could, you know, we ha I mean, this is most of what we talk about in here a lot of the time, right? So, you know, where do you wanna start? Big three.

[00:14:48] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think we should start

[00:14:49] Jim Henson: with the big three. All right, so let’s start with the competing interest of the big three. They loom pretty large here.

[00:14:53] Jim Henson: I mean, Lieutenant Governor Patrick has been a lot of inks spilled on his influence, his power, right? You know, but I mean to the point we’re talking about here, his public profile and his priority items are pretty grounded in the agenda of the right wing of the Republican party. Mm-hmm. And overlapping substantially.

[00:15:14] Jim Henson: But interestingly, I think not completely in his own kind of demonstrated priorities. For example, you know, his support for restructuring the Ercot. And creating a reserve system of quote unquote dispatchable power while de-emphasizing renewables is not something that you would go, oh, there’s that right wing agenda again.

[00:15:36] Jim Henson: Right, right. That’s something that he wants for his own mixture of, of reasons and motivations, and that’s, you know, very different than what’s going on in the house. But, but nonetheless, I mean, to step back the point being, Part of what’s, you know, part of what is feeding this uncertainty is the political position of Patrick Vis-a-vis speaker Felan who profiles very differently.

[00:16:00] Josh Blank: Yeah, and I mean, I would even add to, to the Patrick and what you were just saying about, you know, the Ercot market. I mean, I, you also can’t, and this is sort of idiosyncratic, but it adds to the uncertainty, you know, discount, just the different sort of, Policy preferences, even where there is agreement, and we can, we’ll talk about that between them.

[00:16:15] Josh Blank: But, but I think, you know, the, the, well the energy thing is a good point. The energy thing is a good example of that though, where, you know what I would say, you know, as an outsider kinda looking in and, and not trying to, and not taking account and, and I’m just saying upfront, I’m not taking account of what the institutional players within this fight Right.

[00:16:30] Josh Blank: Want, I’m just looking at the politics on the outside of it and the way the process works. And here’s something where Lieutenant Governor has been kind of out front about wanting specific things in the energy market. And you know, the real challenge here is something I think is kind of common. This also layers onto the uncertainty, is something this big usually takes multiple legislative sessions.

[00:16:48] Josh Blank: I mean, if you’re gonna rework the energy market, rework, you know, various aspects of it. Right. You know, not only, you know, one

[00:16:55] Jim Henson: is they did a lot last time and there’s talking about doing a lot

[00:16:57] Josh Blank: this time. Yeah. And the reality is, is you know, it doesn’t mean that. Everybody on the committee, it doesn’t mean that anyone in the house or the governor necessarily think that that’s the way to do it.

[00:17:06] Josh Blank: Even if they agree with, you know, the politics of it, the policy of it, the idea, right. They might not say, yeah. You know, and I think, you know, the obvious place where you see this coming up again would be property taxes where there’s lot of disagreement about how to get there, right? It doesn’t mean there’s a disagreement about doing it, right.

[00:17:18] Josh Blank: So anyway, you know, I mean, so, and I think you can see that in the house, right? The speaker’s taken a very different profile from the lieutenant governor, right? Is listed priorities, you know, look pretty. Pretty different. I mean, sort of, it’s hard for me not to think of it as kind of, you know, someone kind of holding onto that developmentalist wig and kind of saying, Hey, you know, what about infrastructure?

[00:17:37] Josh Blank: You know, what

[00:17:37] Jim Henson: about, yeah. I mean, I, I, I think what I, yeah, I mean I, you know, we were talking about this beforehand and I, you know, the speaker would probably not love this particular characterization. I don’t mean it in a mean way. No, sir. No. Um, but I, but you know, I mean, I think that, you know, You know, Felan is very much kind of the conservative Texas status quo position here, very traditionally conservative right.

[00:18:02] Jim Henson: In that Well, and, and, and even beyond, whether it’s, yeah, I mean it’s just, it’s sort of. You know, there’s less of a jettisoning of, uh, willingness to jettison the norms of the house. Mm-hmm. And of the legislature. You know, you think about the issue of democratic chairs. Now some of this is also, you know, I mean, and, and then, and then some of that is political in terms of his approach to balancing some, you know, The, the balancing act that we’ve talked a lot about in here, um, that has shifted and that the Lieutenant Governor is shifting.

[00:18:33] Jim Henson: And that is, you know, you mentioned the developmentalist kind of wing of the party, the kind of eco divo concerns, if you will, with the more red meat politics that are propelling some of the agenda of, of a bit of the agenda in, in the Senate. And that’s, that’s what I mean by the status quo and it kind of, Requires you to talk about how the status quo is dynamic, right.

[00:18:58] Jim Henson: In that, you know, the status quo now is not what the status quo approach would’ve been in, doesn’t look like the status quo approach in say, 2017 because of what happened in 2019 and in particular in 2021. Yeah, and I

[00:19:10] Josh Blank: think the thing is, you know, in some strange interesting ways, you know, the, the politics of the house, You know, the politics of the House and the Senate in terms of, you know, there are elections and differences between them, you know, are interacting in ways with institutional factors that lead to this too, right?

[00:19:23] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, in the sense that, you know, Patrick basically, you know, to simplify, you know, seems to be able to go to the Senate and say, these are the issues in which I’m winning statewide, and therefore these are the, this is the agenda. These are the issues we are going to pursue. And for the most part, I think the senators, you know, especially the Republican, I mean the Republican senators specifically are saying, you know, more or less, okay.

[00:19:44] Josh Blank: Yeah. Now that again makes a lot of sense that they have very big districts. Honestly, running in a state senate district in Texas is almost like running a statewide campaign. It’s bigger than a congressional district. It’s a big, yeah, big space. So it’s good chance that, you know, what Patrick is, is saying about his political support probably mirrors a lot of, you know, the political support.

[00:20:03] Josh Blank: A lot of. Majority Republican senators feel, but the house is a very different place. Felan didn’t run statewide. Right? Right. He ran in his district and he was elected by the membership to serve this position. And so ultimately you’d have to expect a pretty different path on a lot of these issues. And that’s sort of a mixture of the political and the institutional.

[00:20:22] Josh Blank: Right,

[00:20:23] Jim Henson: right. And so, you know, just even, you know, before we, you know, drag the lieutenant governor into it, the governor, or I’m sorry, the governor into it, I mean, we. You know, you, there’s a lot of uncertainty given those two positions, right? Right. Um, again, something baked in, there’s shot through with institutional politics accentuated by the personalities involved at this point.

[00:20:44] Jim Henson: Well,

[00:20:44] Josh Blank: and, and all that stuff comes together in some ways when you think about, you know, where is the lieutenant governor can hold a press conference on, you know, whatever issue he wants to emphasize that day, that week, or highlight. You know, you wouldn’t really expect the speaker of the house to do that, except under some pretty unusual

[00:20:58] Jim Henson: circumstances.

[00:20:58] Jim Henson: Yeah, because for the most part, he doesn’t have the incentive to do so, doesn’t have the, in the same way that the lieutenant Governor does,

[00:21:03] Josh Blank: nor nor really the, the support within the institution and the body to do something like that. Right. He

[00:21:07] Jim Henson: can’t speak for the house in quite the way that.

[00:21:09] Josh Blank: And that creates, you know, and that creates some interesting thing.

[00:21:11] Josh Blank: And again, look, that creates a lot of space for uncertainty, right? Because on the one hand you’ve got this imbalance between very clear statements of priorities on the one hand. And then on the other hand, you know, you’re, you’re met with not silence because the actions of the house kind of speak for themselves, right?

[00:21:24] Josh Blank: But as you said, they take a lot longer to unfurl.

[00:21:27] Jim Henson: So then we’ve got Governor Rabbit, right? And, you know, governor Abbot has been outspoken on some key issues, uh, you know, that were manifest. His emergency items and, and the things that he has chosen to talk about or to, you know, sort of profile on most, most prominently, uh, property taxes.

[00:21:45] Jim Henson: Uh, ESAs, he was visiting districts, kind of, you know, uh, nominally promoting ESAs, parental rights, and of course border security. Though as we’ve noted last week and have noted repeatedly, border security has been, you know, Such a consensus point that it’s oddly dropped out of a lot of the, of the public discussion.

[00:22:04] Jim Henson: Um, I’m sure we’ll hear about it again, but to Yes, you know, soon enough. But you know, again, in the points where the politics are shot through with the institutional dynamics that are particular to Texas, you know, his ideal points in some of these high visibility plans, it’s not entirely clear. He wants school choice.

[00:22:27] Jim Henson: He want, you know, he, um, you know, he wants, uh, clearly a reduction in property taxes. Um, but exactly, you know, the kind of things that the House and the Senator are fighting over his position. Not entirely clear in a lot of these areas. Now, we should hasten to add that we’re talking about the public politics of this.

[00:22:49] Jim Henson: There’s probably more, you know, there is more communication going on. You know, behind the scenes in ways that are not public. Um, and, and again, that’s not unusual. The governor’s public role in the middle of this middle period of the session is typically fairly low profile because again, talking about incentives when things aren’t ironed out in the legislature, there’s really not much point, unless you have a really strong position in siding with.

[00:23:19] Jim Henson: One aspect, you know, one, one house or, or one set of proposals on the other. And, and this has certainly been the case with Governor Abbott historically. Yeah. Now he will, you know, he may very well come down more firmly in some areas as we get closer to the end and the threat of vetoes and special sessions becomes more immediate and more present to the players and to the public.

[00:23:41] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. But right now, You know, a lot of the signaling is happening out of the public view, right?

[00:23:46] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, I think if, if the governor thought that he had the juice or the political capital to, to significantly, you know, tip the scales one way or another on a

[00:23:54] Jim Henson: particular policy, I say, I would say juice, political capital, and, well, j let’s, let’s operationalize juice as institutional leverage institu.

[00:24:01] Jim Henson: Well, yeah, I mean, I’m not, you know, or add institutional

[00:24:03] Josh Blank: leverage. Well, I was thinking, you know, I mean the institutional leverage piece, I see kind of the other things you were citing later in the session, you start talking about veto threats when you start, you. Dangling some carrots and some sticks around, that kind of thing.

[00:24:14] Josh Blank: Special session threats, right? Things like that. You know, I think what I’m thinking about, you know, right now is in terms of this more about like political capital. And I think if the, if the governor were able to say, look, this, the only type of school choice program I’ll accept is this one, and this is what needs to pass.

[00:24:29] Josh Blank: There’s a big risk there, which is that they don’t do it right and then you look weak.

[00:24:32] Jim Henson: Right? And, and so, you know, they’re blunt instruments, right? I mean the governor’s main tools are pretty blunt instruments when, you know, house and Senate. Players are negotiating over whether you’re gonna spend. X, you know, X million dollars or x plus y million of dollars on something.

[00:24:52] Jim Henson: Or whether the whole harvest is two years or five, or Yeah, right. Exactly. You know how, you know how many pennies you’re buying out of, you know, school tax, you know, et cetera, et cetera. You know, you can’t use those big weapons cuz you know, it’s just not. You know, and so that, you know, you got a lot of red lines that float around and people run bills, you know, the governor’s people look at things and, and it’s, it’s kind of baked in, in a way, at this stage of the process.

[00:25:19] Jim Henson: But, you know, in terms of uncertainty, it also introduces wild cards, you know, as the governor. You know, and again, not just this governor, I mean, the governor generically as a governor looks for other opportunities to profile, right. Depending on their political position. And, you know, I think we saw this in the last weekend, frankly, with, you know, an a, a.

[00:25:43] Jim Henson: Explainable, but still seemingly to me a little bit precipitous. Move on. Calling for the pardon of Daniel Perry, which is uh, uh, the individual who was convicted in Austin, uh, for shooting somebody at a protest at a Black Lives Matter protest killing somebody. And that’s somebody, you know, this person was open carrying.

[00:26:02] Jim Henson: There’s a lot of things that’s a podcast undo. But nonetheless, the governor jumped into this and kind of said, and said, you know, I’m, I will sign a pardon. Should it come to the desk? And the guy hasn’t even been sentenced yet. Right. So, but that, you know, I think that really underlines, like you got the governor during the session.

[00:26:20] Jim Henson: A lot of the things that are happening are happening out of the public view. And you are, you know, as always looking for events that you can take advantage of. This was, to me, a. An interesting one. Again, explainable in retrospect, I think, yeah, you can see where the politics of this work for the governor, but it is an example that, yeah, it’s wild.

[00:26:43] Jim Henson: Yeah, it can be. It can be wild. Right? So, you know, I think, you know, you look, so you look at the big three, then you kind of back up. Yeah. You know, the other big political factor here is something that we talked about at length than a couple weeks ago. We don’t need to recap the whole thing on, on this podcast.

[00:26:58] Jim Henson: And that’s you. What g o p voters want. Yeah. Particularly primary voters in a state where the primary is, where the action is. Right. We devoted a podcast of the dynamics of public opinion Republican, uh, among Republican voters, two episodes back. Mm-hmm. But the takeaways are, are operative here, right?

[00:27:22] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, you know, the agenda of the right wing of the Texas g o p doesn’t generally alienate the rest of the party we’ve found.

[00:27:29] Josh Blank: Right. Everybody’s in the same directional boat. Right. Right. It’s just about, you know, intensity and this is where you end the specifics of policy may or may not matter, but you know, they’re not gonna be te terribly determinative in terms of like, you know, some gen, you know, some conservative policy.

[00:27:43] Josh Blank: That’s the desire of the most far right. Reach of the Republican party is not necessarily gonna make many Republicans if. Turn away from the Republican party,

[00:27:51] Jim Henson: right? I mean, I, you know, I’m pretty confident that. There’s no, there are no further restrictions on either guns or abortion in this session.

[00:28:01] Jim Henson: That’s not gonna make or break most members. Right. Right. And remember, public attention is very uneven. Right? Extremely uneven. I mean, what did we find less than? The share of the sheriff, the share of, of people following the legislature, like 8% very closely is less than 10%. Yeah. And is generally

[00:28:20] Josh Blank: less than 10%.

[00:28:21] Josh Blank: And it’ll go up by the end of the session, but maybe to like 15%. Right. So this is not, you know, this is, people are, and then just remember, I mean, even the people who say they’re following the session really closely, the vast majority of those people are not, you know, reading bills. They’re not following committee hearings.

[00:28:34] Josh Blank: It just means that, you know, when they pick up the paper and there’s a story about the legislature, they don’t skip.

[00:28:39] Jim Henson: Right. And so I, you know, I, I think as we sit there and we try to figure out what’s going on, one of the things that feeds this uncertainty is, you know, as that kind of suggests, or, you know, that points to, you know, the implications of one party rule in the state.

[00:28:55] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. I mean, yeah. You know, there are very few legislators right now who worry more, uh, about the general election than they do the

[00:29:04] Josh Blank: primary. Yeah. And part of that, just to be honest, is also, you know, we’re still very close to the redistricting process. Yeah. And so these, these are the, you know, this is not the safest these districts will ever be.

[00:29:12] Josh Blank: And this is for Democrats and Republicans. Incumbents, yeah, for both. But it’s pretty near close to the safest that they would be. Right. The lines

[00:29:20] Jim Henson: are fresh. Right. So, you know, you know, oddly enough, I mean in this sense, Texas’s place in the mosaic of kind of national politics, it really looms large here. I mean, the same domestic conflicts that are and, and stories that are leading national newscasts, over gun violence, over abortion, even the intersection of environmental and energy policies, you know, they manifest in a very different way in this one party environ.

[00:29:49] Jim Henson: Um, than they do in a, in a national environment where things are so closely divided. Yeah.

[00:29:55] Josh Blank: And yet, and yet, you know, I mean, again, you, you know, just highly, but, and yet Texas, you know, I, I, I, I, when I used to bristle at this, but now I’m just sort of using it as a set piece and, and yet Texas is also this weird microcosm.

[00:30:05] Josh Blank: And it’s not to say that Texas is a good representation of the country, but it’s a good representation of a lot of the sort of underlying. I think, you know, set pieces of the tension in politics. You know, urban versus suburban versus rural, uh, race and class issues, right? The border and immigration issues writ large growth, friction, labor growth, friction, transportation, energy use, demands, infrastructure, all that stuff here, just because of the state’s size.

[00:30:32] Josh Blank: Is none of none of those issues are small. Right? None of those issues are like, well, let’s, you know, if I think about, you know, it’s like, oh, we need a rural health program, you know, in Montana. It’s not the same thing as when you’re talking about it in Texas. Right. And that’s true for any issue.

[00:30:46] Jim Henson: Right. And, and you know, and, and it means that you know, the antagonisms nationally, You know, bleed into a politics that are inclu, increasingly nationalized in some degrees in the state.

[00:30:57] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. But they don’t seep in all the way and they seep it in ways that are, again, unpredictable and, you know, kind of loosey-goosey and contingent. I mean, yeah. You know, if you’ve got this fight over, uh, uh, the ab the availability of, uh, medical abortion. Yeah. Medication going on. Nationally. Mm-hmm. And it seeps into it and it kind of activates people that might, you know, have not been as activated a month ago.

[00:31:25] Jim Henson: You know, given the dynamics of, you know, that we’ve been talking about, where there is a sense in which, you know, I think among the, the mainstream leadership, I mean, we’re not even hearing a lot about abortion from Lieutenant Governor Patrick. You know, it’s interesting.

[00:31:38] Josh Blank: I get a lot of, I get a lot of, um, Calls, you know, for reporters and, and there’s sort of a set piece that I don’t always disagree with, but I sometimes do, which is, you know, whenever Texas is sort of like not the first to, to produce the most conservative legislation, there’s this idea that sort of gets started out like, well, doesn’t, you know, isn’t Texas usually the leader in X gun rights?

[00:31:57] Josh Blank: You know, abortion restrictions, what, you know, whatever it is, voting laws, and, and you know, my answer does Yeah. Sort of, so, You know? Yeah. Well, yeah. They have been, they have been at times. But the other, but the other side of it too is, you know, Texas is, is a much more diverse place than, you know, let’s say Montana than Kentucky, than Oklahoma or some of, you know, some of the states that sometimes.

[00:32:18] Josh Blank: Push Island. Now, sometimes there’s other examples like Florida where they’ll jump ahead on something. You’ll say, well, okay, that’s sort of interesting. But I think that’s also a reflection of the fact that, you know, again, the size, the diversity of the population, the complexity of the things means that like, you know, we don’t necessarily see Texas always taking lead on some of these things.

[00:32:34] Josh Blank: And sometimes you do see a thing, legislative leaders in Texas, especially under one party rule with a certain amount of safety, say, Hey, let’s. Let’s wait a session. Let’s see what happens. Or we just passed something, let’s give this a little bit more time. And I think that surprises people from time to time too, cuz it’s not, it’s not conservative again in, in the conservative sense, but it’s conservative in the sense that it’s

[00:32:53] Jim Henson: strategic.

[00:32:54] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I, I think, you know, drawing on one of our colleagues work a little bit. I mean, I think I would say that, you know, part of what contributes to this dynamic is, you know, the tendency, you know, that’s gonna be exaggerated in. Lopsided partisan environments to over steer. Right. Or, or what, you know, to be able to, to push an agenda in a direction, you know, powerfully enough that you then kind of find out in some circumstances.

[00:33:26] Jim Henson: Well, I might have gotten ahead of myself here. Yeah. And that may be what, you know, and, and, and at least to the kind of, you know, I think dynamics that you’re talking about, people say, okay. Maybe a pause is an order. Yeah, it’s not. And it’s not, and and whether that’s, you know, whether that’s decision driven, you know, that’s a mixture of decision driven by leadership, but also structural in that, you know, as we’ve seen, we talked about a couple weeks ago.

[00:33:48] Jim Henson: Right. But you, this, this is, I mean,

[00:33:49] Josh Blank: to me in some ways this gets like really to the heart of the matter in some ways. When you sort of looking, you say, okay, there’s all this legislation out there in, there’s private. 5,000 plus bills filed and, and you know, and every, you know, measure all of the most conservative measures that have been passed in any other state that has not have not been passed in Texas probably have some kind of representative in that pile of, of 5,000 plus pieces of bills.

[00:34:12] Josh Blank: But then it filters through this process, which is, you know, very considered by multiple actors constrained institutionally. And what comes out of it is not necessarily going to be a perfect reflection of. Everything that’s going on out there nationally. Sure. In the ether. And I think, you know, what’s, what’s interesting here is that, you know, I think, you know, you know, people, some, if anyone I know listens to this, they can, they can, you know, crap on me later.

[00:34:35] Josh Blank: But in some ways I always find, you know, Texas to be slightly more, slightly more considered an incremental in a lot of the things that it, that they. Generally then they tend to, then I would say, you know, people tend to give them credit for now. Whether that’s because they’re, you know, people are trying to make good policy or whether it’s just smart politics to wait a session.

[00:34:54] Josh Blank: And I mean, one thing that I think is also sort of underappreciated in terms of the uncertainty of this is that most big things take multiple sessions. And so what you might find is that, you know, During one session, yes. Something that everybody thought was gonna pass or move or have a floor vote, didn’t have it.

[00:35:08] Josh Blank: But the question you ask is, well, how far did it get? I mean, I think the ESAs are a good example right now. They had the, you know, the floor vote on the house during the budget amendment process, basically prohibiting the use of funds for any voucher like program or including ESAs. Right. And what, and you know, and that, that a.

[00:35:23] Josh Blank: Passed, or was, was it concluded, which I Right. Which was seen as a big blow, quote unquote, to lieutenant governor, to the, you know, to the governor. And then the governor spokesperson said, well, you know, last time there were about 115 votes for this, and this time there were about 86 or something, you know, saying around

[00:35:37] Jim Henson: that.

[00:35:37] Jim Henson: Well, yeah. Have the, the, the, the people that were present, not voting fu fuzzy, those numbers. Yeah. But, but I mean, but, but I think the governor’s

[00:35:43] Josh Blank: point is, but the governor’s point is you’d say, Yeah, that’s fine. But, but ultimately say, yeah, there’s movement there. So that’s, but that’s kinda what we see in a lot of things, especially a lot of the, the big stuff, right?

[00:35:53] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so that’s another sort of, sort of piece of this, that, you know, all these institutional factors mean that, you know, just because, you know, Oklahoma has passed a particular law doesn’t mean that Texas is gonna turn around and do what Oklahoma did. Right.

[00:36:05] Jim Henson: And I, I, I think, you know, another, you know, Another dimension of all this uncertainty is a certain amount of, you know, you know, gradualism versus sudden change.

[00:36:17] Jim Henson: And you know, the expectation is, you know, particularly from people you know. Either advocates are in the media, you know, people would like less ambiguous indicators of change Yeah. Than they generally get. Sure. I, I would, and for a lot of different reasons. Yeah. Some of it’s, yeah, just cognitive and psychological.

[00:36:35] Jim Henson: Some of it is, you know, professional journalism. I mean, you know. A, a conflict, you know, a, a story with clear con conflicts over clear stakes, much better, much easier for your reader to understand. Much easier to write mm-hmm. Than, you know, a multi-dimensional policy debate with a lot of alternatives within each quote unquote side.

[00:36:55] Jim Henson: Right. And so, you know, the, that also then accentuates this sort of sense of uncertainty that’s out there.

[00:37:02] Josh Blank: Um, I had one other thing. Yeah. I was thinking about, I was just thinking as we, you know, we’re just talking, I’m kind of thinking, you know, I mean there’s also sort of. I think people also tend to try to find a certain amount of path dependence, right?

[00:37:11] Josh Blank: You’re looking, you’re saying this moves from this to this, to this. But I just point out, you know, think about the nature of committee substitutes. Like if you think there’s some sort of path dependence, and again, this is where you’re gonna say, oh, this was how the bill was filed, and then some language was adjusted in committee, and so this is what the bill looks like now.

[00:37:25] Josh Blank: And you say, okay, so this is gonna come to the floor, and if it’s in the Senate, you say, well, Right? Or maybe something completely different will come to the floor in its place. Yeah,

[00:37:32] Jim Henson: I mean, I, I think one of the things that’s, you know, and this is a little, you know, sort of academic and to some degree, but, you know, I think part of what gets missed is, you know, the, the, the prevalence of signaling and how under determined signaling actually is, right?

[00:37:50] Jim Henson: In other words, actors. Advocacy groups, legislators, legislative leaders, the governor, you know, they send signals, but those signals are, you know, very, you know, often, you know, very open to interpretation. Mm-hmm. And, you know, the early signals are often, you know, not, you know, not very good predictors of exactly where we’re gonna wind up.

[00:38:12] Jim Henson: They, you know, again, you mentioned path dependency. There’s a certain amount of, you know, there’s something there. Yeah. But you know, those paths are pretty. With a lot of branches yet to come. And I, I guess that’s one way of thinking about where we are now. You know, there are a lot of branches yet to come.

[00:38:29] Josh Blank: Yeah, I think that’s, I think that’s right. I mean, I think, you know, there’s some

[00:38:32] Jim Henson: of those branches will be

[00:38:33] Josh Blank: dead ends. Yeah. I mean, you know, I think, you know, I mean, the main thing, you know, just to try to make this a little more concrete at the end, I guess, you know, I mean, of all this stuff, the, the things that I think people can, can watch the most to provide the most sort of certainty around the uncertainty is the cal.

[00:38:50] Josh Blank: I mean, ultimately, you know, what, what bills get scheduled for hearings in committees, you know, and, and whether there’s gonna be ti in the order, honestly, in in the timing, right? If you’re like, you know, if you’re like us and you’re watching the legislature regularly, I mean, I, I sort of used to talk about this in the abstract until I watch the legislature a lot more, and now I feel like now I can feel it.

[00:39:06] Josh Blank: Like, you know, it’s like you look at a calendar for the day for, you know, committee X, committee Y, it doesn’t matter, right? And you can look at that list of legislation. And you can kind of go through and say, you know, okay, like, what is this? I don’t know what this means. That’s like probably five minutes.

[00:39:18] Josh Blank: What’s this like, this is about whatever. And then you see that, that that bill and you think, oh, they’re gonna have. Here, you know, they’re gonna have a bunch of people come in, they’re gonna have to break to go to the floor. They’re gonna come back. And then some of those people will stick around and they’re, and like, and you know, and you say to yourself like, yeah, but they can do more.

[00:39:34] Josh Blank: It’s like, yeah, look, they can do more if they want to, but there is a limit on how much they can do. And it’s called time. Right. And when you spend, you know, six hours hearing people, hearing the public come in to talk about some bill that may or may not pass, ultimately that’s six hours you can’t spend on something else.

[00:39:52] Josh Blank: And,

[00:39:52] Jim Henson: and, and, and, and time is generally more on the side of people that are trying to prevent something than people that are trying to achieve something almost always right. And so,

[00:40:04] Jim Henson: You know, I, I think, you know, how do you tie this together? I mean, I, you know, I’m uncertain. Um, but I mean, I, I, I think, you know, the po the takeaway here is, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of the, you know, it’s funny in the, in the kind of non, in the qualitative, you know, academic world, you call this contingency, right?

[00:40:28] Jim Henson: In a more quantitatively oriented, Social science world, you call it uncertainty. Mm-hmm. The two kind of, you know, meld together nicely and kind of thinking, you know, if you’re trying to sort of handicap things right now, it’s still pretty hard. Right. Particularly on the big public issues because, you know, even though we’re, well, more than halfway through now, um, this is where, you know, the things we were saying early on, those first few weeks, they don’t really.

[00:40:56] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, in terms of thinking about how far you are and, you know, things will get more clear as we come back in the next few weeks. Um, but right now, you know, there’s a certain, I, I guess the advice is you gotta live with the uncertainty because it’s baked into the process.

[00:41:11] Josh Blank: Yeah. And I think, you know, the thing is there’s only a handful of, of issues where I would say you could go out there and say, okay, Has Lieutenant Governor made a statement on this?

[00:41:19] Josh Blank: You know, clearly, has the governor made a clear statement? Has the speaker made a clear statement? Is it moving through the committees and does, you know, the Republican electorate right? Support it. And you can name, I mean, the truth is you wanna name those issues. It’s a pretty shortlist and you’d say it’s something to do with border security.

[00:41:35] Josh Blank: It’s probably something to do with property taxes. After that, it gets pretty,

[00:41:39] Jim Henson: And even within property taxes, we, there’s still a big disagreement, but, no, I think that’s right and yeah, you know, that, you know, I think what it underlines there, I was gonna go with ending on the border security kind of example.

[00:41:50] Jim Henson: Yeah. Because it’s the exam, it’s, it’s, you know, It’s kind of the exception to this in a lot of ways. Right. That illustrates the broader point, which is, you know, border security is kind of a, th is a thing unto itself. Mm-hmm. When it comes to Republican public opinion in particular. Mm-hmm. You know, all of the factors that we’ve talked about, you know, there’s actually.

[00:42:14] Jim Henson: No disagreement between the big three on border security. The Republican base is unified on border security. All of the institutional and procedural signs are showing us that. You know, that’s locked down,

[00:42:28] Josh Blank: right? And so I think the big question that we’re asking and we’re thinking about right now is, okay, and we’ve talked about this before, the idea that because there’s such consensus around border security, it actually creates, you know, in some ways an unhelpful amount of freedom beyond that.

[00:42:42] Josh Blank: And so the big question I think becomes, you know, especially, and it’s kind of for us, but I think it’s for people watching the process, it’s also the big question, I think. The people in the process right now is what else needs to be accomplished in addition to moving ahead on border security to make the session appear successful going into the next election cycle?

[00:42:59] Josh Blank: Right. And the thing is that in and of itself is, is a pretty tough question to answer when so much of the energy, especially in Republican circles, is focused on immigration and the border. But that doesn’t mean that other issues Yeah. You know, whether, whether issues we’re talking about now and even the ones that we’re not, aren’t gonna pop.

[00:43:14] Josh Blank: As the session comes to an end and as we go along, I think, you know, the great example of this from the last session would be, you know, transgender, you know, uh, transition care for minors, right? Or gender affirming care for minors that. Not an issue being discussed during the last legislative session in any sort of big

[00:43:28] Jim Henson: Broadway, it was there, but not in the, yeah, not in the visibility.

[00:43:31] Jim Henson: Certainly. And then it became,

[00:43:32] Josh Blank: became a big issue in Republican primaries because the legisla, again, for incumbent legislators for their failure to address it. Now again, they never could. I don’t think that there was much, I didn’t get the impression from what they did, what was saying, what any of the polls going, did anyone in the process during the last session, which was very conservative and passed a.

[00:43:48] Josh Blank: Knew that this would be some issue hanging out that they might get dinged on later, but the reality is we don’t know what that issue is this time either or whether it is an issue or whether they can, the right constellation of things is going to satisfy the elector. Now, again, to your point or to the point of the one per, doesn’t even matter.

[00:44:04] Josh Blank: It’s a question we keep asking ourselves

[00:44:05] Jim Henson: because I mean, you know, I mean, I think that issue came out of the, the primary process last time, but you know, how broad, how widespread, I think is still an open question. Well, and that’s the point.

[00:44:14] Josh Blank: It doesn’t have to be widespread, right? I mean, has

[00:44:16] Jim Henson: to be. Well, I mean, you know, as to reach a certain threshold, right?

[00:44:19] Jim Henson: I mean, I mean, look, Yeah, I mean, I got what I was thinking the way that I would sort of, you know, frame this is sort of, you know, look, there are tiers of issues like that, right? That’s sort of, to me, a tier that’s, you know, again, a lot of uncertainty for members. Some members have to worry about that more than others, I think.

[00:44:34] Jim Henson: Yeah. On both sides, you know. But right now, I mean, if I was to say, you know, what, you know, along the lines that you were kind of wrapping up on, you know, what do I think, you know, what would I think right now has to, has to pass. Yeah. Right. The big question is, A property tax break I think has to pass.

[00:44:53] Jim Henson: Right. For for whom I don’t, you know, and so that opens up all, you know, how and for whom, right? Right. Yeah. You know, the big question on straddling that is, and, and, and I think your dynamic, you know, the dynamic you’re describing is kind of what’s at play here is. Have the school choice advocates crossed their issue over into that category or not?

[00:45:22] Jim Henson: That’s a big question. Right. Um, and that’s where I think, you know, the governor’s point and you know, a lot of people made this point. I mean, you know, we should give a hat tip to Patrick’s vtech because very quickly he had the list of legislators that voted. For the anti-choice amendment in 2021, but did not support at this time or voted no or present not voting.

[00:45:44] Jim Henson: And there’s enough uncertainty in. That decrease that you talked about from 115 to 86 with this, you know, gray, you know, gray area group to make that something of an open question. And that, and, and that actually goes back and what we’re seeing now, I, I think at least in the, in the messaging is. An effort on the part of the school choice advocates to make that seem less uncertain than it is.

[00:46:15] Jim Henson: Yeah, that’s the tool, right? I mean, that’s the argument right now in that space, and I think it does underline. You know, I mean, you and I have talked about this both on the podcast and offline. To me it’s been one of the more pregnant questions going into this session and watching it play out. You know, I would have to handicap it right now as, and, and you know, this will pretty be mo this may be moot by the time the, we get done with this since the education committee and the house is hearing a bunch of these choice bills today.

[00:46:43] Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, you know, that’s one of the big questions I, if I had, if I had to bet right now, I would say, In terms of this multi-session strategy, you know, they’re, they’re short the boats right now. Yeah. I mean, that’s not a, you know, rocket science conclusion based on what we saw. Yeah. But they’re still short enough that I, I, I don’t think they can turn it.

[00:47:04] Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, I also don’t, but, but the, they’re, you know, to our point, to the, to the overall theme, you know, there’s still a lot of time to try to pull some more levers and, and make it harder for some of those no votes to stay. No. Yeah. And I think, you know, we will see a lot of effort on that front. Yeah.

[00:47:24] Josh Blank: It’ll be interesting.

[00:47:24] Josh Blank: I mean, it’ll be interesting to see what kind of levers Abbott can turn. I mean, a lot of. Some specific people have been pointing out. Yeah. You know, his uneven support of, you know, incumbent members. You know, I mean, it’ll be interesting to see if Patrick ends up trying to, you know, sabotage, let’s say the budget, right?

[00:47:38] Josh Blank: So that he could, you know, if they don’t have a voucher bill. But the reality is, you know, I. Patrick Patrick waving around a big stick at the house might actually just firm up their opposition. Right. Well,

[00:47:47] Jim Henson: and and there’s a carrot there too. I mean, you know, having talked to some members informally, you know, the amendment, one of the few amendments that did pass in the Senate mm-hmm.

[00:47:55] Jim Henson: Extended. Yeah. The period of hold harmless payments, quote unquote, for the smaller school districts. Right. And that’s. You know, to some degree, I mean that, that’s just a matter of, you know, if you’re in a rural district and you’ve been a no, and you go to your superintendents and say, Hey, this is what they’re offering.

[00:48:18] Jim Henson: They’ve made it now five years instead of three, two, or it’s five years instead of two. You know, does that work for you? If they start, you know, if they rubbed their chin and then say, you know, that probably would work for me. Well, Yeah. You know, then you’re in a little bit of a jam, right? Yeah. And we just don’t know how any of that’s gonna go.

[00:48:37] Jim Henson: And I’ve had members say, look, you know, at some point, There are ways to make this harder, and it’s basically, for the most part, with resources to the districts. Oh, really? Yeah. It’s a, there’s a number, right? Yeah. And or there, you know, it’s, it’s a matter of numbers and you know, as we’ve seen, public opinion is not clear on this, even in the rural areas.

[00:48:58] Jim Henson: And if the whole dynamic we’ve been talking about, you know, buttressing, this material point with decision makers is this ideological point. The whole movement about, about parental rights, the erosion. Of faith in in the public school. You know, all of that is, you know, very uncertain as of this moment. So with that concrete example, um, thanks again for Josh for being here.

[00:49:23] Jim Henson: Thanks as always to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Um, contextual data on public opinion for this and much more available as always, at Texas politics.tex.edu, we ended on, on. Vouchers. I should also add that, that Josh did a good job compiling and, and framing a lot of data on attitudes towards public education.

[00:49:50] Jim Henson: That is in the blog section of that website. Thank you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with yet another re second reading podcast.

[00:50:02] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.