January 10th, 2023 – The Texas Legislature returns to find a big pot of money

[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 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 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. The legislature convenes in Austin this week for the 140 day. By any legislative session amidst ample speculation about what this session is going to look like, at least among those paying attention.

[00:00:54] Jim Henson: We’ll talk about that some today and we’ll touch on the results from a poll that we conducted in December and released without the usual propagation efforts right before Christmas, though we got a little coverage from uh, those who were still working when we released that poll. So I’m joining in today by Josh Blank, research director of the Texas Politics Project.

[00:01:15] Jim Henson: Welcome. Podcast of the new year, Josh. Oh, I’m

[00:01:18] Josh Blank: very excited. As I said to you this morning, it’s nice not to be talking about elections.

[00:01:23] Jim Henson: Yeah. As we all, as we talk a lot, we have probably, even in the podcast, we get really, really tired of talking about elections and then elections are over and we’re really happy to talk about legislative politics and then, And then it happens , you know, by about May we’ll be going, God, it’s this thing almost over.

[00:01:40] Jim Henson: Although I, I think we’re a little less subject to that than we are to being sick of elections,

[00:01:45] Josh Blank: honestly. Oh, yeah. Well, there’s more happening. There’s actual day-to-day things that are happening and like that we can, you know, react to. Whereas elections, it’s a lot of like, oh, there’s an internal poll, and it’s like,

[00:01:54] Jim Henson: uh huh.

[00:01:54] Jim Henson: Right. It’s sort of like the same bitching over over and over again. Um, so you know, as we’re recording this, we’re recording this probably about an hour or so before the, the legislature gavels into session. And rather than start at the heart of the legislature, I thought I’d start with the big news yesterday, which is still gonna ripple through and has huge implications for the legislature.

[00:02:18] Jim Henson: Let’s start with the controller, uh, Glen Hagers. Updated budget, revenue estimate, which, you know, for those of you that are listening, I should, I don’t really need to explain, but basically the As for those of you that may have just randomly listened to this podcast, of which I think there are very few of you.

[00:02:37] Jim Henson: The controller is obligated to provide the legislature with an estimate of the revenue that they have to spend, and then on the back end, the controller will have to basically ratify what is in the budget as corresponding to to the correct numbers. And for those of you, like I, I, I would name a couple of people, but I won’t.

[00:02:58] Jim Henson: There are those of you that will correct me on the specifics of. That’s the broad arc. I know that we could add a lot more to that. Yeah. But it’s a nice starting point. So I, in his much anticipated reporting of the pre legislative b r e as, as the legislature gets underway, controller Hagar provided. Very good fiscal news to the legislature, more or less, right?

[00:03:22] Jim Henson: Um, he increased the amount of funds available as the beginning balance for the legislature to work with, uh, at least the, you know, the, the balance in excess from the previous session to 32.7 billion, a historic high. , uh, and an increase from the already historic 27 billion that we had been kicking around.

[00:03:43] Jim Henson: And that’s, you know, was in a headline even this morning, I think, from somebody that hadn’t kept up, uh, that was in the, uh, the last b r e that the, that the controller provided. So the projection is that the ledge will have 188.23 billion available, and it is pretty amazing when you compare that to the 149.

[00:04:05] Jim Henson: Billion and change that they had going into the 2223 session, which was, which was a pretty good amount of money then. Yeah. Even, I mean, we were, we went through a version

[00:04:14] Josh Blank: of this. This is in a, I mean, it was like one 20 before. I mean, like, it’s been, you know, it’s been increasing pretty substantially.

[00:04:20] Jim Henson: Right.

[00:04:20] Jim Henson: And, and you know, amidst. All of these sort, sort of confounding expectations over the impact of the pandemic and, and covid. And of course, last time we had a big tranche of, of federal money in play. Right? So, you know where to start. I mean, I, you know, I, I think. A few observations, points of discussion. I mean, at the broadest possible sense, right?

[00:04:45] Jim Henson: It feeds the ongoing sense that there will be money to spend and a lot of ideas in the Capitol building about how to spend it. As we are convening, and I, you know, you and I talked about this, I found Hagers tone and messaging on this. Interesting as always, in the way that the, the controller, I think is one of.

[00:05:06] Jim Henson: You know, sort of lesser appreciated players in the drama of Texas politics right now. Now I think that’s changing a little bit. Yeah.

[00:05:14] Josh Blank: It’s such an interesting position. Right. I mean, in some ways, every time, you know, I mean, we’ve had, you know, we’ve had the con controller to campus. We’ve, you know, like we’ve learned about this over time.

[00:05:23] Josh Blank: I think, you know, somewhat close up, and in some extent you sort of, I mean, at least as a, as an outside observer, I’m always sort of struck by what a crazy job this is . Yeah. Right. In the sense of what, you know, what we are, you know, at least. . This is the most public thing that we ask the controller do.

[00:05:36] Josh Blank: Obviously there’s a lot of other stuff the controller’s office does, but this is the most public and it’s, you know, and I think I’m always struck by this, you know, I mean, this is clearly a political position. It’s an elective office, but yeah, it’s one of the few elective offices where like, you know, you really kind of have to get it right.

[00:05:55] Jim Henson: it’s funny. It’s a funny way of

[00:05:56] Josh Blank: putting that. Yeah. You know, I mean, and if you, and look, and we know what happens when you don’t, right? I mean, we’ve seen that, right. You end up becoming, you know, basical. You know, the butt of jokes for a while and I won’t do anything or say anything to that

[00:06:06] Jim Henson: effect. Right. I I, I, I would say go Google Erica Greeter and Susan Combs and you’ll see what we mean.

[00:06:13] Audio Excerpt: Exactly.

[00:06:13] Josh Blank: And so it’s sort of this odd position where I think, you know, you can sort of occasionally be drawn out of the notion that it’s a political position, but then, you know, you have something like, you know, I think. You know, the, the announcement of the, of the b r e yesterday, and it still sort of reminds you, well, this is, this is still a political position.

[00:06:28] Josh Blank: Right, right.

[00:06:29] Jim Henson: And, and, you know, and, and, and just to, you know, elaborate that only slightly, I mean, I. You know, when you start really looking at the role the controller plays in, you know, managing the state’s position in the bond market, I mean, right. Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot going on here that is really important.

[00:06:46] Jim Henson: But you know, you’re right. This is one of those moments when. , the political nature of the office really pops up and so I, I think there was a lot of interesting texts and context in, in the controller’s announcement yesterday. I mean, he, and, and this has been consistent with the way that controller Hagars, uh, Hagar has run the office and operated in the office.

[00:07:08] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. over his, his couple of terms, you know, he has been a voice through a lot. The uptick in, in state income that you’ve been taught that we were just talking about, especially in the Rain Day Fund saying, Hey. Let’s be careful, right? You know, let’s not get carried away. Yeah. This all looks great.

[00:07:28] Jim Henson: Everybody likes to take victory laps over how great Texas is doing and all the money we’re bringing in and all the growth, you know, and, and the specific, and the specific form of that yesterday I thought was that if you, you know, were gonna have a drinking game with a controller’s speech, the phrase once in a lifetime would’ve gotten you pretty inebriated.

[00:07:45] Jim Henson: Pretty early. Right, right. So, you know, he kept saying that it was a once in a lifetime opportunity. But in terms of the politics, as you say, the agenda he laid out aligns in a very interesting way with the agendas that were seen discussed. Uh, among other major political

[00:08:03] Josh Blank: actors, right? Yeah. I mean, he really highlighted, you know, in investing in the electric grid, which has come up, broadband, uh, infrastructure, water infrastructure, you know, some kind of, the, the really meat and potatoes, salary increases for state employees and teachers, you know, and he really prioritized those really before some of the, the bigger kind of political ones.

[00:08:21] Josh Blank: And I think, you know, and I had this question for you and I was sort of looking at it and I was saying, you know, is this the reflection of and I, this. real quick. I mean, just to reiterate, I mean, his once in a lifetime piece on this is, is is correct? I mean, ultimately we’ve had a bunch of very strange things happen in the last few years.

[00:08:36] Josh Blank: Yeah. There’s no way we’re gonna walk into each legislative session. With 33 billion. Right. You know, sitting around. So I think, you know, that’s just, that’s true. But then as just sort of an observer, I’m sitting here thinking to myself, is this, you know, Glenn Hager, you know, sort of the, the comptroller who not only, you know, makes these estimates, but also is like responsible for like, you know, you know, basically writing the checks , right.

[00:08:57] Josh Blank: Yeah. And seeing, you

[00:08:58] Jim Henson: know, seeing what’s, and keeping an eye on the

[00:09:00] Josh Blank: state’s credit rating, keeping being an eye on state’s credit rating, keeping an eye on, you know, the various workforces in the states and their sizes and all these things. Or is this the reflection of, you know, I was just thinking to myself, you know, Clearly aspires to some higher office at some point looking ahead and saying, guys, , you know, don’t make a bunch of commitments going forward, right.

[00:09:16] Josh Blank: That

[00:09:16] Jim Henson: we can’t keep. And in a more proactive way, I think, and I, and I, and I suspect that this is something that he would, you know, emphasize, you know, taking a substantive position saying, yeah, you know, there’s a lot of growth in the. . And he doesn’t put it this way, but you know, we gotta keep up, right? And this is an opportunity to do that, you know, even at stuff about a, you know, skilled workforce in there.

[00:09:38] Jim Henson: So, you know, now, That said, right, the controller is swimming in the same waters as the other statewide official that must face the voters and and must face Republican primary voters. There was also some language on the impact of immigration with the required reference to the failure of the Biden administration’s policy.

[00:09:58] Jim Henson: So a. You know, for the new year, we’re introducing some clips into the podcast well’s. Not like too many promises, but yeah. So, uh, let’s listen to part of, of what the, the controller had to say in that context.

[00:10:08] Audio Excerpt: Texas must continue to fill the substantial void left by the federal government along our Texas border.

[00:10:14] Audio Excerpt: As people from all over the world continue to pour into our border communities. The federal government’s failure is putting tremendous strain on Texas infrastructure and law enforcement personnel. Infringing on the rights of private landowners and depleting state and local resources and lawmakers should consider meaningful tax reductions to ease the burden of Texans who are grappling with inflation, economic uncertainty, and rising housing

[00:10:40] Jim Henson: costs.

[00:10:41] Jim Henson: So, you know, fascinating. You know, we can unpack them in any number of ways. I mean, that language is, is, and. , you know, the call outs there , right? Yeah. Are, are very familiar if you’re, if you fall, just, you know, we just talked about being sick of the campaign. Right. You know, that was a relatively mild form of what we heard up and down the ballot in, in the campaign.

[00:11:02] Jim Henson: No,

[00:11:02] Josh Blank: no. I mean, there is a very much, you know, unless I forget. Let me make sure to remind you that I too, right. Very much wanna secure the border and lower property taxes. But again, I mean, we’re sort of, you know, again, we’re very much focused on, well what’s, what’s the order? What’s the priority of these things?

[00:11:17] Josh Blank: Cause we’re seeing different priorities, right? All over the place. But the point here being you can’t have a priority list without the border.

[00:11:23] Jim Henson: Right. And, and, and without, I don’t wanna read too much into, you know, one announcement that. Physically focused. I mean, right. The focus of this, of this announcement was not this list.

[00:11:35] Jim Henson: Right. But nonetheless, This list is in roughly inverse order, , right? Not entirely, but roughly inverse order of certainly what we heard from Republican elected officials during the election. Right. But also the messaging that we’re hearing from other sectors of the Republican party. It’s a nice layout of kind of what the array of like what’s on the menu, if you will, but you know, putting.

[00:12:01] Jim Henson: Property taxes at the very end. And we should say in that excerpt, that was kind of the end of that portion of the speech, that list of priorities that you mm-hmm. that you, uh, sort of repeated earlier. Came first. Yeah. And then was followed by this soundbite and then he kind of moved on into other topics and so, you know, saying infrastructure in various ways and we could even talk about the rank ordering within that list.

[00:12:25] Jim Henson: Right. Then immigration, then last. Tax cuts kind of, you know, certainly the opposite of say what? Oh, let me, she’s a random person the lieutenant governor has been

[00:12:36] Josh Blank: saying. Right. Or the governor. And I think that’s sort of, I mean, what’s, and what I think someone could say from the outset say, well wait a minute though.

[00:12:42] Josh Blank: But like if they’re all saying the same thing, then what difference does it make? And I’ll tell you what difference it makes. For example, if you put property taxes at the top of this list and then say that half of the budget surplus should go to property taxes, as the governor has suggested initially. A lot of the money for infrastructure, water infrastructure, pay raises, you know, for state employees becomes a lot more challenging, if not impossible.

[00:13:05] Josh Blank: And so, you know, yes, everybody can agree that this is broadly speaking the list, but the reality is the order of the list really. Does functionally matter when it comes to what they’re actually gonna be able to get done? And

[00:13:16] Jim Henson: some things are more amenable. Right. Looking at the list over are more amenable to one time seeding expenditures.

[00:13:23] Jim Henson: Right. You know, as S E E D I N G. Right. You know, seeding sort of funds or trying to kickstarts things. Mm-hmm. . Than are others. And you know, property taxes are kind of forever. Yeah, well, none are they kind of forever. Unless you just send, you know, there is an idea that, you know, we could just somebody send people a check, but I don’t think that’s gonna go anywhere.

[00:13:41] Josh Blank: Well, yeah, I mean, to give people a check idea kind of sounds like the throw your hands up version of it, , which is basically to say, okay, you know, we can’t figure out a viable method to do this. And the truth is they may look, I’m not saying that’s not the ultimate outcome here. Cause I mean, what I’ve been saying to you and a lot of other people is, you know, the second you start talking about.

[00:13:57] Josh Blank: Trying to fix people’s property taxes. You know, you’re, you’re walking into public school finance real quick and you know Right. Talk about a committee that’s gonna have a lot on its plate this session.

[00:14:05] Jim Henson: Yeah, exactly. So now, you know, so I, I think what this brings us to then is the intersection of. This fiscal moment that we’re in.

[00:14:13] Jim Henson: Right? And the agenda is usual right now. This is where we say, you know, uh, in between the last podcast we did almost a month ago now. Mm-hmm. met the end of the year last year, and now we released a poll that we ran in December. And we can talk maybe, you know, I think as we go, we’ll probably talk about the poll a little bit.

[00:14:30] Jim Henson: But you know, one of the things we did in the poll that was typical, there are a lot of atypical things in the poll that we’ll get to, was we ask people what’s the most important problem facing the state? And those results look pretty familiar. Yeah. As

[00:14:42] Josh Blank: usual, about a third of voters in this case, just under a third, said that immigration or border security was the most important problem facing the state of Texas.

[00:14:48] Josh Blank: That was the plurality choice. So no other issue. Top that. And when we look, you know, in the cross tabs, we found 60% of Republicans, six zero, right? Right. Six and 10 bunch of ways to say this, who said immigration or border security is the top issue facing the state. So ultimately, you know, you can’t miss the.

[00:15:08] Josh Blank: As a Republican elected official by talking about immigration or the border because it just, and you know, encumber the va, you know, the majority of Republicans in poll after poll, after poll. Right. The only exception was at the immediate onset of Covid. We saw a shift and it wasn’t even a total shift.

[00:15:24] Josh Blank: We’re not saying that people said Republican all saying, oh no, we don’t care about the border’s not issued. No, no. It’s still

[00:15:28] Jim Henson: an issue. Yes. Much less than a shift and only slightly more than a blip. Right.

[00:15:32] Josh Blank: And, and I think, you know, this is one of those things, I always think there’s a good, I say this, you get, I’m sure.

[00:15:37] Josh Blank: heard this podcast. You heard it before. I’ll say it quick, but you know, it takes about five or six of the Democrats top issues to get to 60% of Democratic voters. Right. And that just shows, again, if you wanna say like, well, was 60% a lot. Yes, it is a lot.

[00:15:50] Jim Henson: So, yeah. And just, and just to, you know, to be, I mean, I think we can probably come back to this, you know, the two, the two top items among Democrats were political, corruption and leader.

[00:15:59] Jim Henson: not surprisingly, given, you know, partisan patterns and then gun control and gun violence. Right, right. But that was 20, you know, 22% for political corruption leadership, 14% for gun control and gun violence. So to the extent that you’re looking for something to coalesce among Democrats, at least in terms of public opinion, there’s not a lot to work with.

[00:16:21] Jim Henson: It’s called a non. Right. Very well, you know, very difficult. I mean, that’s the problem. The Democrats have to start on something, but I, you know, polling is not entirely helpful in terms of an issue focus, I think, and I’ve been thinking about that a bit, but we can put a pin in that, well, I’ll say first pin of

[00:16:38] Josh Blank: the new year.

[00:16:38] Josh Blank: I’ll add one. I’ll add one just word. I’ll say a mobilizing issue. Focus like the border is for Republicans. ,

[00:16:45] Jim Henson: of course, the continued centrality of immigration and border security as an issue. We’re also very front of mind this week. Right. Joe Biden, you know, made his first and in the in the mind of Republicans, and I think it’s a fair criticism, sort of tardy visit to the border this week.

[00:17:01] Jim Henson: Uhhuh stopped in El Paso. On his way to summit in Mexico City with his counterparts from Mexico and Canada. A lot of press on that. A lot of, you know, criticism from the usual corners on on that stop. You know, the Texas responses to the Biden visit were fairly predictable. Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Patrick both appeared on Fox News and, and probably other places I missed to criticize Biden’s.

[00:17:26] Jim Henson: Visit Variously as a photo op is too little too. Sanitize, I believe, uh, that they San, you know, led to a sanitization, sanitization of the El Paso streets, though I think that was kind of unevenly accomplished based on various coverage, you know, all kinds of, no, he didn’t meet with enough, with migrants, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:17:46] Jim Henson: All, which I think was to be expected. And, you know, look to, you know, to be fair, you know, the Biden administration has kind of earned that a little bit. I mean, I

[00:17:54] Josh Blank: think Democrats

[00:17:55] Jim Henson: in general have earned that quite. Yeah. You know, we said them and I think. Fair

[00:17:58] Josh Blank: thing to his story. There’s a handful of Texas congressional democrats who I think probably can escape that criticism and that’s about

[00:18:04] Jim Henson: it, right?

[00:18:04] Jim Henson: So I, you know, so let’s listen. Um, you know, Lieutenant Governor Patrick provided a very interesting kind of leading indicator of how the supporter security issue might arise as a legislative issue in the upcoming session. And, So we talked a lot on the podcast about the, the sharp increase in state spending on border security.

[00:18:25] Jim Henson: You know, and a couple times you’ve sort of speculated about how the issue is gonna play out in talks about the budget in spending in the next legislature. Now we got a, a pretty clear indication from Lieutenant Governor Patrick talking to Fox News on Monday this week. On Monday of this week. So let’s hear a little bit of.

[00:18:44] Jim Henson: We’re

[00:18:44] Audio Excerpt: beginning our, our session, uh, tomorrow. Uh, and I’ve already authorized our budget, which we’ve been writing for some time. Another $4 billion in the house has as well that we’re gonna spend of Texas taxpayer money. Again. When Trump was president, we spent about 400 million a year, and now we’re spending several billion a year.

[00:19:02] Audio Excerpt: And that’s Texas taxpayer

[00:19:03] Josh Blank: money. Yeah, that

[00:19:04] Jim Henson: does. A, a fairly rich text. I mean, , just a short clip lot in there. I mean, obviously confirms the sense that, you know, given Republican attitudes on immigration and board of security, there’s no interest in ratcheting down spending. But that was a very clear. Kind of signal that there’s no interest in scaling down from the 4 billion.

[00:19:29] Jim Henson: That is kind of, you know, 4 billion plus, right? That is kind of the current level of spending, which in fact was not actually approved by the legislature last time. No, some of that money came in, supplemental approvals, emergency spending, et cetera, after the legislature was long gone. And of course, you know, we both laughed, you know, here and.

[00:19:49] Josh Blank: I say the, the legislature consented, I suppose, if not outright. Yeah. Blessed. But at least via the

[00:19:55] Audio Excerpt: implicitly,

[00:19:56] Jim Henson: but, but not via the, the whole body or via the budget. You know? I mean, I think it was, anyway, yes. I mean it took some sign off, but there was very little resistance, let’s put it that way. But I mean, you know, I think you have to do a little bit of close reading here and I don’t mm-hmm.

[00:20:09] Jim Henson: you know, I don’t want to overdo this, but you know, the Lieutenant Governor’s choice of words when he says, I have authorized really underlines. What should we call it? His active management in control of the Senate G O P Caucus.

[00:20:22] Josh Blank: That’s a nicely way to call it,

[00:20:23] Jim Henson: to describe it. Well, you know, we’re, we’re fair here at the second meeting podcast.

[00:20:26] Jim Henson: Try be. I mean, you know, I was wondering if that was, you know, you and I didn’t hear this together, but watching you listen to that clip, I mean, I struck you the same way. Struck me, right?

[00:20:36] Josh Blank: Yeah. I mean, look, ultimately , you know, that’s a lot of. Right, first and foremost. But yeah, I mean the notion that basically the lieutenant Governor’s, you know, I mean, admitting to the idea of before the process sitting and deciding, you know, what is and is not gonna go into the budget, I think, you know, more than, more than surprising is kind of one of the most direct confirmations of the dynamic that we kind of.

[00:21:02] Josh Blank: I, you know, see

[00:21:03] Jim Henson: going on. I just think the word authorizing does, you know, falls very heavily in that

[00:21:07] Josh Blank: passage. Yeah, no, that’s certainly true.

[00:21:10] Jim Henson: Um, you know, and, and in terms of thinking then, kind of going back to where we started in terms of what was going on, what was in the con, what was in the controller speech, right.

[00:21:18] Jim Henson: And the rank ordering. Um, , you know, the Lieutenant Governor released, you know, a statement I think as the b r e announcement was happening. Mm-hmm. maybe shortly after, or shortly before, but I think I, I, I saw it I think immediately after. Um, in which, you know, he made it clear he thought the first priority still should be tax relief for Texans.

[00:21:42] Jim Henson: And what he said was, as I stated previously in my November press conference, another interesting. Mm. You know, sort of, uh, uh, subjective position, shall we say. Texas taxpayers must first receive tax relief before we commit to any new spending, and so, You know, I, I think as is often the case, you know, we get a lot, we get very sort of focused on what happens in the building on the first day and, right.

[00:22:14] Jim Henson: You know, I think you and I both, you know, I don’t know if you saw the email before, you know, reporters wanting to say, Hey, let’s talk about like the committee appointments and things like that. It’s like, whoa, you know? , the signaling going on before any of the process starts, I think are, is really the thing to watch right now.

[00:22:29] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. and there’s, you know, very signal rich environment right

[00:22:32] Josh Blank: now. Well, I think that, and you know, just, you know, in terms of like the timeline for people to watch as closely, I think people, some people know this , that, that, you know, what you’re talking about is a much longer process than people think.

[00:22:40] Josh Blank: It doesn’t end when the session starts. It doesn’t end when a speaker’s appointed. We still have a ways to go in this signaling game that’s going on right before we actually get to where the rubber meets the road and we start to see. Which bills actually move in committees, which, what gets substituted?

[00:22:55] Josh Blank: All these different pieces and moving parts and what kind of is just dying on the vine. And it’s like, there’s an essence right now I think where, you know, people really want to jump ahead and sort of say, okay, what’s gonna happen? It’s like, right, no, it’s either what, what’s gonna happen? It’s, what are we watching?

[00:23:07] Josh Blank: Right? Right. And this is what, right now we’re watching the signaling and what, and

[00:23:11] Jim Henson: what can we glean for? What can we glean from the signal, you know? And some of that comes from reporting, some of it comes from us, you know, around whatever. So, so, you know, I mean, I. . I say

[00:23:20] Josh Blank: one, just one thing, just, just, just on this point.

[00:23:22] Josh Blank: I mean, it’s interesting, you know, if you take these two pieces here, right? And, and in some ways it’s interesting, you know, you start with the sort of the breathlessness of the, of the, of the b r e, right? And it’s like there’s so much money and your point, you know, early on, you know, it reinforces this sense that like, oh, you know, there’s a, there’s a lot we could do here.

[00:23:37] Josh Blank: A lot of, a lot of possibilities, a lot of. But you know, you start to like think about this stuff and it’s like, okay, well, you know, they increased the homestead exemption in the LA like the very, very end of the last session and did not have a mechanism to pay for it going ahead. If we didn’t have this huge, you know, again, surplus, we would be talking about that.

[00:23:53] Josh Blank: Surely short Medicaid was shortchange. They’ve gotta be made whole, right? Right. That’s just perpetual thing. Again, normally we talk about the beginning decision, we’re not talking about that because it’s just a drop in the bucket of this huge number. Right? We’re gonna do 4 billion in border security.

[00:24:06] Josh Blank: Okay. You know, that’s an extra billion over what was appropriate, at least last. that’s gonna happen, right? But you know, there’s, there is a revenue, I mean, there is a spending limit. There are these sort of constraints that have been imposed that they can change. And I was gonna say, like any of this can change, but you know, the amount of like money that’s out there for all this stuff, it’s by the time you even get to property taxes, you’re already thinking like, well, how much is left?

[00:24:27] Josh Blank: Right? Yeah.

[00:24:27] Jim Henson: Two things are you. . Hey, it’s still finite. Yeah. , I mean. Right, right. It sounds like a lot, and, and I think we’ve said that, we were talking about this at the, you know, late last year. You know, on one end you have a large but finite amount of money. Yeah. Including, you know, extra money, quote unquote.

[00:24:42] Jim Henson: But you have a nearly infinite number of supplicants and ideas for that number. Yes. Uh, for that, for that money. So, you know, so I, you know, so I think. , you know, as we look at where the Lieutenant governor was, we look at the controller’s, focus on infrastructure yesterday. Mm-hmm. , um, or, you know, earlier

[00:25:00] Josh Blank: this week’s a little bit more with the speaker who we haven’t talked about that

[00:25:03] Jim Henson: much, but he’s Yeah.

[00:25:04] Jim Henson: But the speaker’s also been, you know, the speaker and the governor have played their cards a little more right. Closely than has Lieutenant Governor. But that’s, you know, itself is a, a matter of discussion and illustration, stylistic, um, and, and in institutional and yeah. Right. Institutional position. I think that’s exactly right.

[00:25:22] Jim Henson: but you know, you contrast what the controller had to say both and what he gave pride of place and what he also just included. Mm-hmm. , you know, with the contrast with um, uh, the express priorities, Lieutenant Governor, um, you know, and it points to familiar tensions within the governing Republican coalition.

[00:25:44] Jim Henson: Right. And, you know, I think that tension is interesting. I think we look at. , you know, a lot of times simply, not simply, but a lot of people, we should say, look at this a lot. At the elite level mostly. Yeah. And the way that we’ve done mostly today, you know, we brought in public opinion as the context for this, but there’s another context that I think are previous polling and certainly the December poll.

[00:26:08] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. really helped capture that, I think does infuse. I think helps explain some of the uncertainty why everyone’s, why there’s not a consensus, why everybody’s walking around kind of going, well, what are we gonna do? What are they gonna do? And, and everyone’s not going, oh, it’s obvious they’re doing this.

[00:26:24] Jim Henson: You know, that is in this very dynamic Texas environment. We’re growing fast. We’re feeling the pains of that growth. We’ve talked about that a lot in here. Controller talked about it yesterday. And Texans feel that, I mean, we picked that up in the polling. For example, we’ve asked a few times whether people think the state’s population growth has been good for the state or

[00:26:46] Josh Blank: not.

[00:26:46] Josh Blank: Right? And when we asked this last year, the plurality of Texans, 40% state’s been bad for the state. 34% said good. And thinking about, again, the governing coalition, go back to Elite for a second. A majority of Republicans, 52%. Population growth has been bad for Texas. And if you think about, you know, the way growth has worked in, in the state.

[00:27:04] Josh Blank: Yeah, I mean, you know, the urban centers are, are a big part of this growth, but really it’s been the explosion of the suburbs and the expansion of the suburbs out into the exurbs basically. Which, you know, if you’ve been following Texas politics, it really has, you know, I would say, uh, Conditioned a lot of what the political conflict has looked like and and where it’s taken place.

[00:27:22] Josh Blank: If you’re thinking to yourself, you know, what has been the center of political conflict? A lot of it has been around issues that really touch in the expanding suburbs and really again, the culturally expanding suburbs as the suburbs get bigger and cover more areas. But what we find then is when we say, you know, again, even though this population in growth has been.

[00:27:36] Josh Blank: Uh, really focused in and around Texas cities. 34% of urban voters say the population growth has been bad. More say it’s been good. 39% of suburban voters say it’s been bad. 50% of rural voters say population growth has been bad for the state of Texas. And so ultimately, you know, I mean, no, you could say that’s a pretty broad question, and I agree.

[00:27:55] Josh Blank: And so the question becomes, you know, well, what’s, why design? Yeah, absolutely. And the question becomes, well, what’s bad? But we could break that up. But I mean, if you think about some of. The, the likely , you know, the likely, uh, candidates here, you’re thinking about transportation, you’re thinking about housing costs, you’re thinking about, you know, essentially, I mean, the nature of the population change it’s going on in the state, right?

[00:28:14] Josh Blank: The effect it’s having on local schools and all these things that you can actually kind of really kind of link back to the fact that the state is in this, you know, very dyna dynamic place, but also how do you have a dynamic growing state with a really, you know, limited government. , let’s say low taxes, low services model.

[00:28:30] Josh Blank: Right,

[00:28:31] Jim Henson: right. Yeah, no, I think that’s right. And I think that, you know, it is something that, you know, we’ve looked at in, in different kind of ways and it kind of, you know, in terms of putting internal pins on things, you know, figuring out, you know, there are a lot of different sources for that. Discontent.

[00:28:46] Jim Henson: Right. Or discomfort, you know, some of, you know, and you know, as you were going through that list, it’s interesting. I mean, it, it brings us back to a lot of discussions that we. Have as we try to figure out what’s going on in Texas politics and really what’s going on inside the base of the governing coalition because you know, you know there’s a Ben diagram here.

[00:29:08] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, and I doing this off the top of my head between something that’s kind of, you know, we might think of as social cultural discomfort. Right. With this transition, the kind of just basic service provision. Mm-hmm. that you’re talking about. You know, and probably some other thing that’s even kind of straddling the two of those, you know, you can conceptualize that any number of different ways.

[00:29:29] Jim Henson: We don’t wanna go down a rabbit hole, but it’s out

[00:29:31] Josh Blank: there. Yeah, and I mean, and I think the thing is, is that, you know, in an effort to sort of continue to, to sort of move the model of conservative governance forward at the statewide level, You know, I think at the statewide level, they’ve sort of walked into a little bit of a, of, of a difficult space.

[00:29:46] Josh Blank: And I don’t know if they, I don’t know if they’ve realized it yet. So, I mean, as we’re sitting here talking about a 33 billion budget surplus at the state level, you know, cities that have been, you know, in the state have been growing dramatically. Inflation has created, you know, a serious pressure on their ability to, you know, basically pay for services.

[00:30:01] Josh Blank: And, you know, I would say, you know, increase infrastructure, right. But yet those cities have been capped in the amount of tax revenue that they can actually generate to, to deal with most of these issues. So what has the result of that been? I mean, in my mind, I think you draw a line to all of the bond propositions that have passed all over Texas.

[00:30:16] Josh Blank: So basically when you go to Texas voters in any of these cities pretty much and say, Hey, we’re gonna raise your pro your taxes for this, and voters have pretty much unequivocally. Go ahead schools. Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You know, you wanna do, I mean, you know, Austin has a huge project, road transportation.

[00:30:32] Josh Blank: Yeah, yeah, go ahead. You know, affordable housing. Okay. And so, you know, ultimately there’s a little bit of a, there’s a tension I think going on here in this. Now look, a place like Austin or Dallas, you can do that. Now the question is, is that, you know, as you move for that, we, we’ve known about this for years, but like the idea being, you know, if you are in some outline area to one of the major, you know, urban centers that, you know, maybe had a population, let’s say under, you know, let’s just say under 5,000 somewhere, and all of a sudden, you know, in.

[00:30:57] Josh Blank: Two decades, you’ve doubled or quadrupled. Yeah, you don’t, you don’t have the water infrastructure, like any basic, like the plumbing needs of a community like that. And that kind of capital project is incredibly, I’m saying,

[00:31:09] Jim Henson: incredibly expensive. You’re rediscovering the traffic that you’ve either never, never experienced, or that you moved out there to escape.

[00:31:15] Josh Blank: Well, and you think about it, there’s all these stories all over text. I’m not saying this is related. There’s actually a lot of reasons for this proof pieces, but all these stories kind of from different places in Texas where it’s like, oh, the water is off again. Yeah, you. This is, you know, these are the sorts of things where when republicans are solely in charge of state government and the water stops working, there’s nowhere else to point the fingers.

[00:31:35] Josh Blank: And so I think there is a little bit of a reckoning coming up on some of this stuff that says, Hey,

[00:31:38] Jim Henson: you know, well, I, I think, and I think the reckoning not to put, not to this oversimplifies a little bit, we’re not having a reckoning yet. I just wanna be clear. But I think as well, I, you know, but I think, I think what we’re seeing are the signs of a reckoning, right?

[00:31:50] Jim Henson: Yeah. Because, and the reckoning, the specific form of the reckoning to my mind, Is underlying what we’re doing here today. I wish I just said this at the beginning. Well, this is how we do things, , but it’s a, you know, in post, we’ll put it at the front. I mean, I think when you are, you know, there, this goes back to a theme that we talked about quite a bit, or we come back to, and that is, you know, what, what are the, what is the fallout of a sustained period of one party rule, right?

[00:32:18] Jim Henson: And in this particular piece, it’s. , how long can you talk about limiting government and getting government outta your life, whether it’s. You know, lately it’s been, as you kind of imply, state government, right, but also making sure, you know, in the transition from the democratic period to the Republican period, you know, there was a lot of, and with, with the national foil and the nationalization of politics in the state, a lot of discussion about over weaning government, government being too active.

[00:32:52] Jim Henson: I mean, in the current environment that, you know, if you want to use government to be assertive beyond a very minimal point, you’re now called socialist or communist. Yeah. The weapon. When you are the incumbent party, you have to govern. And so there’s limited government, government impulses and rhetoric and the basic requirements of governance.

[00:33:12] Jim Henson: And I think the rubbers beginning to meet the road. That, and I, and it’s hard for me to not look at what we got in the December pole, right. in these questions that registered a lot of widespread discontent with state government. Mm-hmm. , which was fairly new. I mean, the plurality of Texans. In that December poll, 46% said that state government in Austin mostly ignores the needs of Texas residents, while 37% said that it mostly addresses those needs.

[00:33:38] Jim Henson: And when we had asked that, Five years ago in October, 2017, without repeating a bunch of numbers, it was roughly inverse. And let me just

[00:33:47] Josh Blank: add, and without repeating a bunch of numbers, I think one of the most important points about that change, right? So from, you know, more Texans saying that, you know, state government is addressing versus ignoring to needs to flip and having more Texans saying that the state is ignoring that needs of resident.

[00:34:01] Josh Blank: is it The vast majority of the deterioration of that attitude came from Republicans, right? Democrats already held negative views of state government. It was among Republicans that we saw this biggest decline in these evaluations. And when we think about right now, this moment that we’re in, where we’re talking about, okay, we’ve got this big budget surplus and everybody’s talking about what they’re gonna do, well this, and similar question that we asked back in October 17 and again in December, is state government mostly careful or mostly careless?

[00:34:27] Josh Blank: With people’s tax dollars. And here we found 48% of Texans, almost a majority, said that the state is careless. Only 31% say they’re careful. Again, this was a flip back in 2017. 44% said they were more, they were careful. 37% said mostly careless. And again, the deterioration came among Republicans and that is something that I think, you know, is just something to keep an eye.

[00:34:47] Josh Blank: I’m definitely gonna be keeping an eye on this. You know, we’ve been asking about, you know, I think one of the things that we’ve done a bunch here is we’ve asked about border security spending as that border security spending. Going up and up and up. And one of the things we were wondering, just as a question, is there a point at which, you know, the, the sort of the rhetoric of fiscal conservatism and, you know, the reality of.

[00:35:05] Josh Blank: 1 billion, 2 billion, 3 billion, 4 billion keeps adding up on border at some point, do people say, you know, we’re, we’re spending enough on the border, and especially do Republicans say that, and we’ve never seen that in the specific case when we ask about it every time we’ve asked, regardless of the increase in spending the, the plurality or majority response on among Republicans that the state is spending too little on border security.

[00:35:24] Josh Blank: But it’s interesting when we take a step back and just say, but, but generally speaking, you know, your impression of the state stewardship of your tax dollars not

[00:35:32] Jim Henson: good. Yeah, and, and I think. You know, so as we, you know, as we look at this, at this session unfolding, you know, we’ve talked a lot about, and you know, and it’s now the set piece of understanding Texas politics and it should be, which is, you know, the, the power and the, you know, the gravity of the attitudes and, and you know, the mobilization of the universe of g o p primary voters.

[00:36:01] Jim Henson: Right? Right. But the, the question now, I think twirling around that is related is, is a different aspect of a question that we’ve been asking for a while, which is, you know, what is, what is the political identity of conservatives in this moment? Yeah. And how has all of that. Reconfigured in Texas in a way that on one hand reflects this powerful national polarization and nationalization of politics and of the rhetoric inside the Republican party, which was on display in the big speaker fight in Washington dc right?

[00:36:34] Jim Henson: In pretty stark terms, and the reality of the collision between the growth patterns in the state and the fact. The Republican party owns the state right now and has to find, you know, A point at which they can reconcile or is challenged to find the point at which they can reconcile that kind of national rhetoric and that energy from the base and the follow up on rhetoric that has been so predominant in Republican politics about limited government and getting the government off your back and anything government does is probably oppressive to you in some way or another if you just scratch hard enough to the fact that there are functions that state government plays.

[00:37:20] Jim Henson: Right. That burden is increasing with growth. Mm-hmm. . And, you know, now you have to, you know, and, and you, you know, you, we may be reaching a watershed point on that, that watershed point may be, as the controller implied yesterday, an empirical fact. Right. Um, but then you have to sort of convey that somehow.

[00:37:45] Josh Blank: Well, and the other thing is, you know what, every, you know what Everybody who watches legislature will remind you is anything. , the legislature is going to take multiple sessions. Right. And what we’re talking about here, I think is the sort of thing where, you know, I mean these sort of undercurrents that we’re talking about, I don’t think they’re going anywhere.

[00:37:59] Josh Blank: And I think there’s every reason to expect them exacerbating. What’s interesting in the varying, you know, messaging you’re hearing from, from the major players around this. I mean, if some ways you can take a step back, and this is actually I think, a different take that I’m hearing in a lot of places now that we’re kind of arriving at it, which is just say, you know, there’s this sort of question about, okay, you know, Like looking ahead, we definitely need to deal with some of this stuff.

[00:38:19] Josh Blank: Yeah. But you know, the question becomes, and this is always I think the question Yeah. But like, are the politics of the right now just too powerful a force to like, to allow for anything more than incremental steps? But I think to the comptroller’s point, you know, look, you know, you’re not gonna have another 30 billion budget surplus to do infrastructure next session.

[00:38:37] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:38:38] Jim Henson: And, and I think that, you know, in a sense, I think, you know, as people continue to ask, well, what’s the agenda? Yeah. Who’s gonna have the upper hand? And, and look, it’s fair to say, is it gonna be more like 2019 or more like 2021, which is, I think, a reasonable way to frame it. Sure. Um, you know, that gives you some kind of empirical reference.

[00:39:01] Jim Henson: Um, But I think that is actually the clash right now, right? Yeah. Is that is going to be what’s gonna determine, however you want to think about it, you know, whatever frame you use that’s gonna determine where we land between 2019 and 2021, or where you’re gonna land between, you know, red. Yeah. You know, let’s just focus on, you know, beating the most conservative session again versus, you know, trying to, trying to govern and trying to do some of these things that are not.

[00:39:35] Jim Henson: you know, don’t activate the base and presumably activate some degree of resistance within the Republican party. And that’s really kind of, you know, I think at the end of last year I was talking about it in terms of Right, you know, the developmental sort of impulse versus Right. You know, this other, the more ideological impulse.

[00:39:55] Jim Henson: I still think that. That’s kind of what we’re looking at, but I think, you know, this last week, I mean, the stuff we’re talking about today does help clarify that a

[00:40:03] Josh Blank: little bit. Yeah, I mean, and I think, you know, interestingly enough, you know, I think the, the, the contrast between what’s going on here in Texas and what’s been going on in Washington the last week or so, really does also point, you know, to that fact.

[00:40:15] Josh Blank: Whereas, you know, you can be a Republican and you can go to Washington and you can basically spend. A legislative career trying to dismantle the system. Right. It’s kind of hard to do that in Texas cause it’s not that much of a system to begin with, you know, besides its size. And also, you know, republicans are responsible for, you know, making sure that the water’s clean and that the electricity and the lights stay on.

[00:40:36] Josh Blank: Yeah. And all these other things it like. need to happen.

[00:40:40] Jim Henson: Yeah. You, you know, you have to govern. Right. , you know, I mean, I think you can’t

[00:40:43] Josh Blank: just run for

[00:40:44] Jim Henson: elections and, you know, well, and I, and I think, you know, there’s this notion of governing less and governing more, but I, you know, I think we’ve inherited now, you know, a lot of governing less.

[00:40:54] Jim Henson: Yeah. And I, I think, you know, I, I, uh, probably agree with the controller that this is kind of a moment. Yeah. You know, so yeah. Once in a lifetime. So on that, I wish we had that talking head song to put in here, , but we’d probably need to get permission, um, with that. Um, a good start to the session. Yes. Um, so, uh, if you have thoughts on this, you know where to find us.

[00:41:20] Jim Henson: Uh, and so with that, we’ll, we will wind it up. Uh, thanks again to Josh for being here. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin, and for in particular, queuing up some of those excerpts on short notice. Thank you for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:41:47] Jim Henson: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.