January 24, 2023 – Reading tea leaves in budget bills & Senate committees as the Texas Legislature ramps up

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?

Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

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. Joined again this week by Josh Blank, uh, research director of the Texas Politics Project. How are you on this rainy Tuesday morning, Josh? Not the date. Ourselves too much.

I think I’m feeling pretty good. I like the rain. A little change of weather, you know. I mean, I was definitely like one of the people in Austin freezing yesterday, but. You know? Yeah. I mean, it was like in the fifties yesterday. It was like in the fifties. It was colds, . Okay. I don’t care what you think, where you’re from.

Well, you know, we, we get acclimated, I suppose. Yes. So, you know, last week we started by noting that. As the legislature continues to get it self organized, you know, there hadn’t been a lot happening right now. That dynamic continues somewhat this week since, you know, you know, since we recorded last week.

But, you know, we’ve seen more stirring around, shall we say, it’s an old friend of mine used to say a and in the legislature in political circles, and we’re beginning to see things gel a bit more. Mm-hmm. , we’re still not to the, you know, the fat part of the. But you know, same time in the last week we saw a couple of interesting things.

One, the unveiling of the, the first draft of the budget bills in the House and Senate, which you know, was foreshadowed in last week’s teaser from Lieutenant Governor Patrick about, you know, the budget he had produced. He’d authorized, I believe he had authorized the budget. He had authorized that, that was the word.

I couldn’t remember. Yeah. And you know, and also, you know, in terms of, you know, very inside baseball though, there were a couple of media stories on this because there’s not much else to write about if you’re on the beat. Uh, and that was the much anticipated unveiling of committee assignments, um, by Lieutenant Governor Patrick, again in the Texas Senate.

So let’s start with the latter. I think, you know, talk a little bit about the committee assignments, but just a little bit in, in the sense that in the direct committee assignments, at least at kind of first take. , you know, there were not a lot of surprises. There were a few things you could kind of notice.

I think, you know, the Lieutenant Governor’s current crop of go-to senators, shall we say, you know, we’re in charge, kind of where you thought they were gonna be without a lot of change. Uh, Senator Shortner, uh, still has, uh, business in commerce. Uh, Senator Hughes at state affairs, and of course Senator Huffman at finance and of course, a very busy week for Senator Huffman.

Given the release of the these budget document. You know, in terms of the politics of this, Probably a thing. It’s had the highest relative. Mm-hmm. public profile, Houston Democrat, John Whitmeyer gets the ch, you know, keeps the chairmanship of the criminal justice committee. He’s the only Democrat to get a chair this time, you know, and this became kind of, you know, the.

You know, the thing that got a lot of attention for its implications in capital circles now, you know, uh, Senator Whitmeyer is running for Mayor of Houston because the thought of him, you know, not being in politics seems completely crazy. It’s possible now know he can’t hard imagine what he would be doing or what he would want to do with his time.

So he is running for Mayor of Houston and so this chairman. Has something of an exp, you know, expires by date on it. And Lieutenant Governor straightforwardly said that once the senator exits the Senate one way or the other, he won’t appoint any more democratic chairs. And this’ll be kind of the, you know, he hasn’t put it quite this starkly, but the slow death of, you know, the much discussed tradition in Texas, very different from DC of.

Uh, there being the minority party in the legislature, getting some chairmanships very notable during the period of, of, you know, monotonic, , you know, Republican rule. But it comes a lot a amidst a lot of politics around this. Yeah. I mean, you know, You know, Whitmeyer, you know, it’s fun to describe Senator Whitmeyer as a unicorn for some reason.

To me it just sounds , but, but he is just not representative. I know. Well, you know, kind of disturbing all, it’s, the images of that are a little like, no, it’s shocking. It’s a little jarring. And that’s why I like it. You know, when I say it out loud, I felt the same way you did. So anyway, . But, but that’s right.

I mean, there’s, there’s not a, this isn’t. Repeat anywhere else. I mean, what Wimar has been in the Senate since 1985, I believe. You know, I can’t remember when he moved the, the number in my head is that he was elected is when he was elected to the house. Right. Which was 1972. He moved over to the Senate in the early eighties.

Yeah. So early, mid eighties. But you know, it has been a fixture in the Texas legislature. You know, he’s up there basically. And this is part of his stature in the Senate. Yeah. And part. , frankly, the cover that the Lieutenant Governor has even setting aside, however you might view Senator Whim Myer’s politics and how he fits into the tapestry here.

Right? He is the dean of the Senate, right? As you will hear, if you watch and has been there a long time, you know, I think he is up there in terms of members. It’s he, representative Thompson and Representative Craddick are the three senior percentages in. The legislature writ large, all from, you know, actually, you know, uh uh, Tom CRA’s been there since actually the late sixties, so, right.

So, you know, his seniority makes him unusual. The fact is, you know, his profile as a Democrat, as a Houston Democrat, you know, makes him unusual. His own profile as a Democrat in Texas over the time period he’s covered makes him difference. He doesn’t count. But the broader context, of course is, you know, it’s hard not to.

Contrast with all the calls emanating, especially from from the far right of the Republican party to uh, Speaker Felan in the house from appointing any Democratic committee chairs. Yeah. The key context here is, you know, there are calls emanating and have, this has been going on for a while, although it, it’s really sort of notched up in the last year, year or so, right during the last session, but certainly in the run up to this one, you know, lots of calls emanating from.

G O p, state Party Chair and former house backbencher, Matt Aldi, to end the tradition of awarding the minority party committee chairs in both chambers. You know, this is empowered by I an item they put in the primary ballot. Yeah, that of course. You know, I think this is a part of this. I mean, this is one of those areas where attitudes.

Kind of not very deep, but it’s pretty bankable that if you put something on the, on the primary ballot that says, you know, should it be part of the, you know, Republican part of policy, to not part of the platform, to not have Democrats be chairs? Everybody’s gonna say yes. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Cause exactly would say, this is not really like a thoughtful question.

Now look, people may believe this, but the reality is this emanates again from, you know, the party platform, which is developed. party activists, you know? And so it is what it is. But I think the main point is to say, you know, it’s easy to kinda look at this and say, Hey, wait a minute there, there’s such a big deal about the fact that there’s gonna be de, you know, there might be democratic chairs in the house, right?

Why is there no similar call, you know, to say, Hey, why is this going to the Senate? Well, number one, Whit Myers is very different. Number two, there’s no hint of an idea that the Texas Senate is being inhibited from a enacting a conservative agenda. Because John Whitmeyer is the chair of one committee in the Texas Senate.

Right, right. That’s not an issue. Whereas in the house, Amongst a much broader sort of political, you know, ongoing multi-session political fight about agenda control. Usually there’s this idea that, you know, somehow, or there’s, let’s, there’s political profit to be had at least by some members within the dominant party to say, Hey, look, you know, we would get everything what we wanted, but right there are these democratic chairs, which I think is, I think is, you know.

Yeah. Well, and this is, uh, problematic arguments. You know, in a lot of ways it’s a, it’s a relatively easy play for Dan Patrick. Mm-hmm. in terms of the contention generally between the way that the Senate and the House have. Sort of interrelated in the last few sessions. Mm-hmm. , you know, if not even in the big sense historically, but also in terms of the, the not good relationship between the speaker and the lieutenant governor.

Right. I mean, this is a way of just putting the screws to, to Dave Felan based on the assumption that, of course it always takes longer for the, the house to put the committees mm-hmm. , you know, together than it does in the Senate. Much more complicated puzzle. I think we talked about that in here a couple weeks ago.

And it just, you know, it just kind of puts the screws to feeling, he’s been pretty clear that he is not going to. You know, not appoint democratic chairs. What you’re left with now is at what point is he gonna settle, acknowledge this fight, probably reduce the number of chairs from the last time, and then what is that number?

I mean, I, you know, there’s all kinds of different speculation. It’s one of the things that, you know, there’s a lot of speculation floating around out there on this. Yeah. And I hadn’t thought about it, but I mean, at what point does, you know, does that appeasement actually just kind of make it pointless?

You know, in the sense that like, You know, part of the reason that, you know, feeling can say this is, this is important because ultimately it gives, you know, democratic members more skin into the game. And honestly, it’s hard. It’s a legislative session is hard and it’s especially hard on the house to get stuff through.

And it’s especially harder still when people are outright at war with each other. So there is value to bringing Democrats and making them, you know, giving them, you know, more investment in the process. Having said that, you know, if you say go from, And chairs and say, well, we’re gonna give you these two committee chairmanships at some point.

It’s like, well, you may as well just have given nothing. Right. I mean, well, I mean, you know, look along those lines, I mean, talking about this is just a, you know, is, serves as a very useful stock horse for simply, you know, for the argument that feeling’s not conservative enough, right? He’s not enough of a Republican cetera.

Again, from a fairly narrow band of, you know, participants in the pro, direct participants in the process. Mm-hmm. , you know, despite the fact that, you know, as we’ve said, you can get this to poll. Well, and you know, well, and it relies on an overly simplistic few of how governance actually works in a legislature.

Yeah. You know, you know, all that said that, you know, I was thinking as I was thinking about this this morning, and I, I don’t, I don’t know what I think about this, but Okay. You know, it does make me wonder if. You know, in the big scope of things, you know, we are seeing the beginning of the end of this tradition, right?

That, you know, on one hand it can feel very of the moment for some of the reasons we’ve talked about. Mm-hmm. , right? That, you know, this enables, you know, for all, you know, all the politics we’ve already talked about without recapping it again, but, you know, if you step back. , would I be surprised if in a few more sessions down the line, for lack of a better, you know, more precise, say in 10 years?

Mm-hmm. that. This tradition had kind of gone by the wayside that, in other words, Patrick goes, you know Yeah. You don’t have any democratic chairs in the Senate next time, or you know, right. You know, should Patrick follow through with that? I have no reason to think he won’t. And feeling scales down the number in response to this until the pressure, you know, is it very likely.

We see those numbers go back up in the future. I mean, it’s not impossible to envision a scenario with a more moderate, you know, or change somewhere. No, I can’t imagine it a less conservative lieutenant gut, but it’s, you know, it’s kinda like, you know what we said about the worst security thing? Who is gonna be the lieutenant governor of the future speaker that stands up, at least in politics as configured now, particularly the Republican party, and raises their hand and says, you know what?

We need to like go back a little bit. We need to backtrack on this a little bit. Return to a somewhat more cooperative model that’s based on, you know, more out party chairs. It’s just, I, you know, so. You know, it was probably one of the first times that I kind of thought about this in a longer term, rather than the politics of the moment and kind of, you know, I mean, I think it’s reasonable.

Think this may very well be the beginning of the end of that. Yeah. I like the way you put that. I mean, if you said, if you, if we’re placing bets right now, and we said, okay, in 10 years, you know, do you expect the majority party to, to appoint minority, you know? Yeah. Uh, party chairs or not, and your choice is yes or no.

You know, whatever. Make the bet, whatever you want. Say, okay, I’m gonna go now. Yeah. And I would, and it’s not even like, I have to think about it that much. I mean, it’s a pretty safe bet. I mean, in one way or another, whether the safe gets more competitive. I mean, one thing to think about is like, so if Democrats eventually capture the majority in the house, are they gonna put Republican committee chairs?

I. . I highly doubt it. Yeah, right. But the other thing that I think just to make one more, especially given how far out that probably is. Yeah, exactly. But I think the other thing that this, you know, to some way, you know, in terms of the politics of the moment, that’s interesting to me is, and how this interacts with the agenda piece of this, is that, you know, in an overly simplified view of governing is look, you know, if.

Let’s say, for example, this is gonna be a public education section, you know, session. You’re not gonna put a Democrat as the chair of the public education committee in the house, right? It’s not happening. If it’s not gonna be a public, like if it’s gonna be, you know, we did a bunch of public education stuff last session, and this session we’re focused on, you know, let’s just say the border and you know, public safety.

Well, there could be some Democrats that you could select that you could give a public education chair to, because it’s not a big part of the agenda. And ultimately, what again, people don’t understand is that the speaker does control something else, which is who’s gonna be the chair of the calendars committee?

Right. And what legislation is it gonna get through the flow? There’s a lot of other choke points. There’s a lot of other choke points. And the other pieces is the, you know, again, the Republican speaker, no matter who the Republican speaker is, no matter what their ideology is, is not appointing a Democratic committee.

Who is going to endanger their agenda and endanger the agenda of the majority. And so that’s something that like, and that’s what I think people, you know, again, I understand why it’s valuable politically to make a big deal out of this and why, you know, the speaker doesn’t want to necessarily walk away from this tradition because the person who benefits from this is really, you know, I think the speaker and the house in some ways in terms of, you know, Intangible benefits.

Right. But again, they’re not necessarily actually substantive benefits. Well, and that’s sort, I think where the mix up is this idea that Democrats are somehow getting something or Republicans aren’t getting what they want because of this thing. But the reality is if Republicans really wanted something that was a big priority for the party, you’re not gonna see a Democrat chairing the committee that legislation goes through.

Yeah. I mean, I think the way I would put that is probably, you know, , it probably has less impact on legislative output in the agenda than people think. Yeah. You know, but what’s out there is, you know, the internal politics of, you know, particularly in the house mm-hmm. , you know, the, the position of the presiding officer vis-a-vis the body.

Right. Yeah. And so, you know, at this point, one might argue, and I think reasonably convincingly, that feeling gets a lot of political benefit and political backs. from, you know, having a relationship with at least some Democrats. Mm-hmm. , which has been the patterned Right. You know, historically, and it’s a function of where Patrick is both institutionally as lieutenant Governor, but more specifically where the, you know, where, where Patrick is.

in the here and now in this senate, you know? Yeah. Across which he strides like a colossus. Yeah. , um, you know, what does he need democratic chairs for? Right. So, well, and then, you know, and that, and that’s a political, you know, that’s in terms of political and positioning as a presiding officer. Yeah. I mean, what, and just one more observation on this.

I mean, I think, you know what, what prohibit. Republican. The Republican majority from enacting a hundred percent of the party platform are a hundred percent of the legislation. Besides sort of, you know, some political calculations that they may be making on their own is not democratic committee chairs.

It’s the fact that we have. a session every two years. It’s a limited timeframe to actually go and, you know, if we were in a continuous cycle, you just imagine, just move ahead. Do the next voting bill, do the next abortion bill, so on and so forth. We don’t have time for that here. And so, but part of what that means is that to the extent that, you know, Democrats are more or less willing to throw.

The end in the gear is kind of actually indirectly prohibit how much the majority can accomplish. And so that’s, I think what I, is sort of the more sophisticated, you know, sort of understanding that the insiders get that sort of, the activists don’t understand and say, well, if we just got rid of de Democratic, everything would be, would be easy.

And it’s like, no actually, because those Democrats would try to make everything as hard as possible because their goal would be to run out the clock from the. Right. You can’t, yeah. You have to understand like what the value of those chairmanships in that. Right. So it’s not, it’s, it’s not, it’s not like it’s a, it’s like well we could have a hundred percent, but instead we’re getting 60%.

It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. You’re getting 60%, you could get 55%. Right. And that’s, I think, you know, whether that’s the exact thing, I think, but I, that’s the kind of calculations that people would make about what they get out of this and why this is a better approach. But to your. I don’t expect this to last for that much longer either.

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, I mean, I think that’s a, an interesting thing right now is kind of where, I mean, you know, again, it’s as always in the session, you’re focused on kind of what’s in front of you. Right. And it just kind of struck me as like, you know, this very well may be the beginning of the end.

Right. Um, of that, you know, even given those. But I mean, I, you know, we were not gonna talk about this this much, but I mean, I think this is yet another one of those things where patterns of polarization and partisanship. really color this. Yeah. You know, and, and, and are drive and drive this dynamic. And, you know, to be fair, I mean, you mentioned, you know, the, you know, the, the unpleasantness of 2021.

the willingness of Democrats to walk out in 2021, to be fair, did catalyze this in some ways. I mean, I, there’s, there’s no doubt in my mind, that’s one of the reasons that Republican activists see an opportunity here, and it’s really the only kind of explanation for that when you look at how successful they were in the agenda last time.

So, yeah, so, you know, the. Kind of meaty piece that came up that’s, you know, come up in the last couple weeks is that, you know, or at least last week since we, we talked last time, is the release of these draft budget bills that were largely similar and not the first time that we’ve seen that. You know, and a lot of the coverage did focus on the commonalities in these bills, right?

Yeah. I mean, I think, you know, in the past when money’s been tighter, you know, you see a little bit. I wouldn’t even say divergence in the draft budgets, but different prioritization is a little bit more apparent here. Whereas, I mean, what struck me in this to your point was, you know, they were so similar, but of course they also, you know, left out a lot of money.

Right. And so, to my mind, you know, just from a practical standpoint, you know, I saw that as okay, we, we, we largely agree generally, but where we’re gonna have to really dig in now is on the particulars around where all the requests come in and how they’re gonna deal. The extra money for. Right. And there was a lot, you know, a lot of, you know, there are a couple of good stories that mm-hmm.

you know, kind of summed this up. Karen Brooks, Harper had a good piece in the Tribune. Yeah. You know, I mean, you know, 40,000 feet. The House and the Senate bills both include 15 billion in property tax relief, 1.8 billion for state employee pay raises, uh, which we had seen kind of emerging mm-hmm. recently in some of the, the pronouncements that we’ve heard.

Uh, and then, you know, interestingly, and I guess we’ll, we’ll come back to this, 4.6 billion for the governor’s border security program. , you know, for border security spending, including a big chunk of that that goes directly to the governor’s office. Mm-hmm. , you know, per recent practice, that’s a slight increase from the sum spending that we saw on the last bium.

A pretty big increase in what was. appropriated last time. Right. Originally in a significantly, you know, just call it a huge increase from say, astronomical eight years ago. Is that astronomical? Is that technical definition? Well, you know, they’re shooting for the stars here, that’s for sure. So, right. You know, I mean, front and center here, you know, we have to say, you know, campaign promises.

of property tax cuts, which were a recurring feature of Republican campaigns in the fall, along with border security and in a real soft spot. At the end of the last session, when we, we finally got to the very end of the last session, that was one AR area where, you know, among across the, the voting populace, but also, you know, and notably among Republicans, there was a lot less.

With the job that state leaders and legislature did on property taxes versus the other kind of big issues. Right. Really actually, versus all the other issues, to be honest, and, and as we’ve seen, you know, as we’ve talked about on here, you know, thousand times, you know, over the last few years. You know, as soon as you start scratching at property taxes, you are getting into school finance.

So there’s also 3.1 billion to buy down local school property taxes. And then the Senate, sort of the Senate budget D it differs in that it has an extra, you know, chunk of money set aside, uh, to raise the homestead exempt. Right from 40,000 to 70,000, which is what has been kind of govern, uh, Lieutenant Governor Patrick’s sort of pet approach to this.

Now, as you kind of, you know, you sort of alluded to the way that this became a thing at the end of last session. You know, in the last session, you know, pretty late, they, the legislature passed a. You know, raise an increase in the homestead exemption from 25 to 40,000. You know, and what we’ve, you know, the, the calculation that was floating around at the time was that this would mean all things being equal, which they never are with property taxes.

$175 cut or so do cut on average for annual property taxes. Now we’ve pulled on this a couple of times. Yeah. Trent, you know, in a general kind of sense. You know, kind of devoid of, of or trying to minimize the context, shall we say? Well, you know, it’s tough. I mean, you say what, what is the appropriate context?

Right? And I mean, so to your point, just to, to the, to the responses to these questions, you know, what we tend to find, you know, not surprisingly, is that when you’re talking about a, a, a tax cut, Annual tax cut on a property tax bill of, you know, between 125 and let’s just say somewhere between a hundred and $200.

It doesn’t, I don’t even think it really matters. You know, you have to remember, you’re talking about something that actually will be manifest on people’s property tax bills over 12 months. So we’re really talking about, you know, 10, 10 bucks a month. Yeah. 15 bucks a month on, you know, property taxes that, you know, are going up significantly more year over year.

And so it’s not surprising to find people. Kind of say shrug their shoulders. It doesn’t say, yeah, this isn’t really gonna make much of a difference. Now the other factor here, of course, is the fact that property values fluctuate. And so ultimately what ends up happening is two things. One, this a dollar figure gets eaten into basically every year in most places.

If the economy’s good enough, property values are going up right now, what the legislature would says less so than it used. Because of limits placed on localities and how much additional revenue they can raise on existing properties. And that’s true. So there has actually been some, some compression of this.

But the issue here is that, you know, there’s two sort of things that kinda make. Squishy one, it doesn’t have, most people don’t notice it. If they do notice it, it’s probably unlikely that they’re gonna think that it affects ’em that much. It might get erased in the next few years, but the legislature actually still has to pay for it.

Right. And so, you know, I mean, I think, you know, it’s an interesting play. Obviously this is going to be one of the major negotiating points and you know, and as we’ve been saying for the last couple of weeks, One of the things that’s interesting about the budget, about this, about these budget bills is that it’s another, they are another step in us looking at where the horse trading is gonna be and what the negotiating points are gonna be.

You know, I, I, and it’s interesting, the macroeconomic environment. , he’s gonna have a very interesting effect on this. On one hand, you and I were talking this morning Yeah. In another context about, you know, the cooling real estate situation in some places in Texas, whether that sustains itself and it’s very uneven, right?

Like Austin’s cooled a lot, Dallas is still looking, you know, humming along, right? So it’s, it’s uneven, you know? And so on one hand you have that dynamic of, in the last couple of cycles where we’ve talked about property taxes. Property values were going nowhere but up. Yeah. Appraisals were going nowhere but up.

Right. That was kind of unambiguous and that’s important. I mean, at that end of 2021 result, I mean we were in the thick of, you know, just skyrocketing property values. Right. And, and in a kind of unex, you know, not slightly unanticipated way, we’re still kind of processing like what the work from home Yeah.

Shift was the impact, but the reality having on it wasn’t a change in the direction of the trend. It was just an acceleration. Yeah. Right, right. It just, yeah, it. Changed it in, in the nature of it, but not the direction. And then the other thing is inflation, right? Yeah. And we don’t, you know, obviously we don’t know what’s going on with that.

And the inflation and the impact on the housing market are somewhat length with a lot of intermediate things, but by interest rates mm-hmm. , and, you know, if anybody knows exactly where interest rates are, I mean, if you watch the financial markets and read the financial press, there’s a. Disagreement over what the pace of that is gonna be and a lot of disagreement inside the Federal Reserve.

So all of this, which is to say a lot of variables here, we often, you know, we focus a lot on the, you know, as we say, the, the levers that are available to the legislature, right? The difficulty, the complexity, the property tax cuts that are expensive, et cetera, et cetera. Uh, as you say, you know, once, Commit to them, you gotta keep paying for them.

Well, but there’s also a very uncertain macroeconomic context for all of this as well. Yeah, no, I mean, it’s interesting man. I’m just sort of, I mean, there’s a couple things I’m thinking about hearing you talk about it too is, you know, what’s interesting to imagine is, you know, if, let’s say we do come out of this period of inflation with, you know, an economic contraction and let’s say further.

The property values, you know, either stay the same or dip a little bit. You know, ultimately the legislature is still responsible for the portion of the prop of the homestead exemption. They’ve bought out the funding formulas for school districts still operate based on at weighted average daily attendance numbers.

Right. And so, you know, do you hit some point where you know, actually the state’s gonna have to kick in more because property values have gone. . Right? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, the other thing I also think about, I don’t know the answer to that. I know this is the worst thing on an expert podcast is like, I don’t really know, but I mean, one thing I’m thinking about also is, you know, they cap the, the increase, right?

In terms of your property value, right? For the purposes of valuations. But if you’ve been living, you know, one of the major cities over the last couple years, you know, that’s been getting enacted year, over year, over year. So what I wonder is, and I this is, someone might know this, please email me. I’m curious, you know, but like, if, if we go and say, okay, well, you know, yeah, your value, your property of your value went up, you know, X amount, but we’re actually only gonna count it as much.

I mean, you’re still like on the next year, I mean it still went up even if it stays flat, right? Yeah. Relative to where the valuation was. So even you could have a situation, you can imagine, especially in some of the, these high growth areas where, you know, in some ways the, the home values are actually staying flat.

The economy is, is is weakening. But actually your property, Val pri taxes are still going up because the value of your home increased so much in the last five years. Right? So there’s a bunch of different things going on here that I think are very. I mean, you know, I mean like, yeah, we said this before, but like this is when you rely so heavily, you know, on a tax base where the tax basis is, you know, something whose value fluctuates over time.

Yeah. Highly variable. It’s highly variable, right? Yeah. And it’s highly variable in a way that’s really outside of the control of the Texas legislature in any major way. Right? So also in this budget, yes. Uh, you know, old reliable border, as we mentioned, a few, as I mentioned a few minutes ago, border security and the budget certainly matches you.

Predictable polling results. We, you know, I, I was thinking last week we talked about the m i p results. We don’t really need to re, re rehash all that, but, you know, border security and immigration, the, we get, we get an answer to a question we’ve been asking here, which, you know, I, I think. , the, the answer to this was becoming more and more clear, but that, you know, we’re not gonna see much of an adjustment in border security spending.

There’s no political rationale for that, or to the extent that there is a political rationale on, on spending in this session with, on one hand a bunch of money laying around and the configuration of border security politics. We’re not gonna see any fighting over this. No. I’ll just add one thing. I think the one thing.

I think that we’ve probably passed a certain threshold in the dollar figures now, where not only, obviously, you know, it was for all the reasons we’ve talked about, we’re not gonna see Republican legislators decrease the amount of money that Texas has spent on border security, given the importance of Republicans place to it, attitude towards that spending.

But now that the number’s becoming so absurd, I mean, in some ways I think action. I’ve been noticing this in Abbots re Abbots rhetoric a lot more when there’s always been this idea. This is a federal responsibility. Yeah. I think when the number was smaller, you know, a lot of the times it was Democrats kind of shaking their fist and we shouldn’t be spending this money on border security.

This is, this is the federal government job. Like why are you doing this? As the numbers be con gotten so big and has been attached to this sort of perpetual, you know what’s going to be, it’s the war on terrors, a perpetual crisis that there is no right, there’s no solution at the border. Let’s say that, well then at this point, the number becomes so absurd.

It becomes a political prop in and of itself to say, look at how much Texas taxpayers are paying to secure our own border. Right. That it’s that the federal government is failing at doing and the number becomes another piece of evidence. And as long as you see, yeah, as long as you see the kind of public opinion numbers on the spending that we’re seeing.

Yeah. You know, particularly among Republicans. But as we’ve talked about in here, you know, when we ask about border security spending, you know, are we spending too much, too little, the right amount? You know, independence and Republicans are still, you know, saying, , you know, either too little or the right amount, which are effectively okay.

You know? Yeah. Butchers policy and, you know, importantly, a non-trivial amount of, of Democrats fall into that. And so, you know, there was, there might have been a moment to think about that, but you could see a situation, you know, let’s say we hit a recession next time around, you know, and all of a sudden we’re making cuts to, to public education, to others, you know, which we’ve done in the past.

And let’s say we’re doing that, you know, are we gonna see a cut to border security? The answer’s probably not. It’s gonna be a lot harder for all the reasons we point out, but even, but then it becomes even more politically valuable. We say, yeah, we’re in a recession, we’re making cuts to, you know, transportation, to public education, to hospitals.

But you know, what we’re, we still have to spend 5 billion at the border every, you know, by Yeah. And, you know, that’s because the federal government’s failed. So there’s a very, I mean, it almost becomes, it has a self-sustaining quality to it from a political standpoint, even though it’s becoming you. A serious budgetary consideration.

Yeah. And you know, there was a, you know, and I think, you know, you know, national politics will shape this a little bit, but not, not this session, . No. I mean, I mean, they’re shaping it, but it, you know, that dynamic could be potentially disturbed by national politics. Yes. And a Republican president that starts pouring money into the border.

But, you know, that’s not happening this session. So there’s a, you know, a lot of other stuff is, well, you know, I do wanna say something that we, we didn’t talk about going into this, but. There’s also this big allotment or the, you know, the, the, the push, which I’m a little bit surprised by to increase, uh, public employee and teacher pay.

Now, teacher pay, we know polls very well. Yeah. Has become more complicated, I think, in the context of some of the educational politics, right, of the Covid and post Covid period, or late Covid period, I guess I should responsibly call it. But I, you know, I’m gonna be interested to see what the public employee piece of that looks like when that, when the budget moves to the floor, you know, but we’re all beginning to, we’re already beginning to see some little counter moves on the far.

things like, you know, there was legislation introduced recently, I, I think in the house to, you know, limit the pay of any public employed and not more than the governor makes. Now that’s a symbolic just shot across the bow stuff, but it is an indication that we probably will hear a little bit about that, particularly from the far right of the party when it comes to public pay.

You know, there’ll be amendments about taxpayer funded lobbyists. There’s gonna, yeah, I. It’ll be a vehicle for a lot of things, but I think it’s interesting to see that there does seem to be a bit of consensus on the state leadership on that, which, you know, I, I, you know, look, I’m not saying state employees don’t deserve that or, you know, whatever, but.

One of those things that’s an artifact of the moment that I could see in a different circumstance. Obviously not playing nearly as straightforwardly as it seems to be plain now. I think the other thing in here that I think is kind of the dog that hasn’t barked, that we’ve, I think these are, these are related, but Yeah.

That is related Is, is. Some of the priorities that are very much in play. The key one there I think is, is infrastructure. And infrastructure is interesting because, you know, I, I think neither the signaling so far, the existing budgets as I read them anyway, nor the polling tells us a lot about it. I mean, Infrastructure is tough, practically, and politically, right?

Yeah. I mean, look, the, the reality is, is when you’re talking about infrastructure in Texas, first of all, you’re talking about a huge number. Whatever it is, it doesn’t dollar figure. It doesn’t matter what we’re talking about because it’s, Texas is so big, it’s so spread, there’s so many people, so it doesn’t matter, you know what area of infrastructure, there’s no small investment in infrastructure in Texas, right?

It’s not really possible. The other problem, Yeah. Outside of a local, a local project bill, right. That scaled infrastructure spending. Very, very expensive. Yeah. I mean, so, so practically, you know, you have to put in a lot. to to, to even really do something noticeable. Then, you know, politically there’s two big problems.

You know, the time horizon for most infrastructure projects are sort of the best midterm, most likely long term. You know, so if you’re talking about, you know, big, you know, major transportation projects, you’re talking about 10 plus years of planning, permitting, et cetera, then construction, then you ruining people’s lives for five years.

Then you get the be. A lot of people aren’t gonna be in politics who are there right now. Right. You know, thinking about this. And then, you know, the other thing is, is that there’s nobody gets, no politician gets a benefit for not screwing up. So, for example, no one’s gonna get reelected because the water kept running or the lights stayed on.

Right. And so, you know, there’s not necessarily this, this, you know, screaming for action. However, now I just said that there is a lot of discontent out there and I think there is, you know, around, again, some of these bigger picture things we’re talking about, the cost of housing, the cost of living, you know, concerns that people are expressing.

You know, transportation is not getting necessarily better quick enough for the population, potential local, you know, grievances about. Perpetual local drivens are about traffic, but also, you know, you’re seeing, I mean, if you follow the news regularly, you’re seeing multiple instances where, you know, where you boil water notices in places at very different parts of Texas.

Yeah. So for very different reasons or no water at all, there’s still concerns about. , the reliability of the electric grid. And so, you know, well, we can’t say that there’s specific polling that points to like, oh, you need to do this because really, I think infrastructure, you know, I think response is really crisis driven.

Yeah. But that discontent is like, it’s pretty palpable out there. Yeah. And, and, and I think that, You know, I think you can’t underestimate the degree to which the grid failure two years ago was a catalyst for this. Mm-hmm. , you know, I mean, not in some hugely comprehensive way in the, you know, , we ask, we ask voters what’s the most important problem facing the state and the, you know, even when we had evidence in more focused questions.

People didn’t have a lot of conf, people’s confidence in the reliability of the grid had been shaken. Yeah. And they didn’t expect the L that the legislature and the leadership had really solved the problem. Right. Even at the height of that, if we said, what the mo, what’s the most important problem facing the state?

The grid didn’t no pop up and we asked, you know, we pulled right after the, the failure. Right. And, and even and perpetually after that. But, you know, I mean, I, I think you know the problem here, part of the problem here is that these things tend to take more than one session to develop. Mm-hmm. , they generally get lost in overlooked and media coverage.

I mean, there are people that, you know, kind of boutique specialty, you know, as a function of their beat and their interests is keeping track of this stuff. But for the most part, it either gets lost, overlooked, or not. You know, frankly not presented very well in media coverage. Mm-hmm. because of that, I mean, following things that develop that are complex systems that develop in the legislature incrementally over time.

You know, I mean, look, any, anybody in the legislature that’s been around will tell you Yeah. You don’t do these big things in one session. Mm-hmm. , you know, you look at, and we’ve talked about this, what happened in the last, the middle of the last decade when we saw, you know, some steps forward on transportation and on, and especially on water.

You know, that wasn’t like, aha. Yeah. You know, we, you know, we just, we walked in, we did this, this was the session. It was the product of a lot of painful negotiation, you know, and failure and moving bills through the process. And you know, getting a lot of stakeholders with a lot of influence in the process and also from a legislative perspective.

These things take a lot of expertise, a lot of patience, a lot of time, and they’re not very glorious. Yeah. And so, you know, you see somebody like Senator Nichols, who’s been the transportation guy for a long time, is Chair of transportation again. , and we see this in other policy areas, but it’s especially so in these big slow developing areas.

You know, you’re not seeing a lot of people going, Hey, I wish Senator Nichols would leave so I could be the transportation guy. Right, right. And so these, you know, the politics of this are very, are very complicated. That said, you know, as we’re sitting here talking about about this, I do think. Might have missed a little bit coming, or I might have missed coming into this, this idea of the grid failure as a little bit of a catalyst because, and, and again, these things also, there’s political entrepreneurship involved here.

Mm-hmm. , you know, there’s other things going on. In response to crisis. But you know, we, we’ve seen a lot, a lot of stirring and a lot of signal setting on infrastructure this time. Well, you know, in ways that I’m a little, I mean, I shouldn’t be surprised at because of the money. Yeah. Cause the money’s available on the other hand.

You know, it’s not really been an environment that’s been particularly focused on long-term issues. Yeah. You know, and I’m wondering, you know, we’re talking about this kind of coming in. I mean, even, you know, just to add even to that list, you know, there’s a lot of tension in a not a lot of attention that’s a lie.

There’s a very narrowly focused attention, at least in Austin about, you know, a bill by, uh, Senator Hughes that would relax compatibility requirements basically across Texas. And that’d be a, that’d have a big, big impact for like building in Austin. And, you know, so I, I add that to this and you know, it’s interesting.

Sort of looking at polling over time. Right. I mean, one of the things is you get the , you know, the advantage of looking back and seeing what you missed, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, one of the things that, you know, looking back over the last decade, you know, I think pollsters, myself included, definitely discounted the extent of economic discontent coming out of the last recession into the great recession of, you know, oh 8, 0 9.

and the extent to which that, you know, that combined with, you know, political attitudes and really, you know, sort of the Tea party wave was a bit of a surprise. You know, I mean, we knew these meetings were going on and having, but like we didn’t know that, you know, that Republicans were gonna have the kind of extend and sweep they did in 2010.

Yeah. It’s magnitude was, it’s magnitude was pretty shocking. Yeah. But then a lot of people kind of went back and. Oh yeah. You know, , all these kind of, these white people over the age of 40 have been really, really, really negative about the direction of the country. Yeah. Now the economy, and I think it had been easy enough to say, oh, that’s just sort of partisan filtering of, you know, the environment, whatever.

But ultimately it was consequential. When it became consequential. Yeah. And I don’t think there’s something like that’s gonna, like, there’s a ground swell here in Texas, but. notable, and we’ve talked about this on the podcast of before, you know the duration of, you know, the, the extent in duration to which majorities of Texans are saying the state’s on the wrong track.

Yeah. The extent in duration to, of which, you know, people keep saying that their own, that that Texas’s economy, not the national economy. Again, it gets filtered very much through sort of who’s in the White House, but Texas’s economy. Is not as, not sort of a standout performer, you know, is what it used to be.

Depends on how you ask the question. But ultimately there’s more negative uses of Texas economy. We people with their own personal economic situation, you say. You’ve seen, again, this trend of negative attitudes. We ask about inflation, same thing. You look at attitudes on housing, you look at attitudes on transportation.

You say there’s an underlying discontent here that like, I think it’s easy to kind of look and say, yeah, you know, this is, this is too amorphous because it’s not you. Well, it’s just Democrats or too, but, but, and that’s the thing. If it were just Democrats, you say, oh, it’s just Democrats having Sarah Graves.

Right? But the reality is, I think it’s not, and we see this in a question we talked about before. You know, we. Reactions to the state’s growth and their most negative among Republicans. Yeah. And that may be about something else, but, but overall, to the extent that the state is, is growing. Continuously. And that, you know, there’s this kind of wide, you know, let’s see, increasingly widespread notion maybe that the state is not responsive to this growth.

And this is one of the main December results that I think we got when we asked this question about whether or not state government is responsive, you know, to Texans or not. Like our addresses are ignores the needs of Texans. And over the last five years we’ve seen a significant shift in Texan’s views on whether the state’s actually responsive Tottan needs.

Yeah, an inversion. An inversion, if you will, . I’m, you know, again, I, but it’s an inversion driven, I mean, I think to your point, yeah. It’s an inversion driven by, you know, a 20% decrease in the positive ratings in those two items that we talked about. Right. Among Republicans between 2017 and 2022. Yeah. And I think that, Look, I mean, I, I think somebody would be fair to object to object.

Well, you know, look, that is just the, you know, you’re talking about the same thing. Mm-hmm. , that is the growth of the discontent elements within the Republican party. But I think that, you know, I mean, as you’re talking about, I, I have a counterpoint to that though. There’s a couple of different things that are interesting about that.

You know, that the arc of that trajectory one is, One of which is you can sort of focus on how we miss the economic discontent. Mm-hmm. , if you go back and you kind of look at the, some of the academic and and political discussion of this at the national level and the rise of the Tea Party and Trump and mm-hmm.

the general level increase of discontent mm-hmm. with American life and institutions. There’s a frequent academic discussion that says, well, how much is this? You know, it’s just mainly cultural or mainly economic. Mm-hmm. . Right, because you know, the one thing you, you didn’t mention, although it’s embedded in there, is, you know, that Tea Party wave comes not only after the Great recession, but also after the election of the first black president.

Right. . But those things, I mean, I’ve always thought that it’s analytically useful to try to separate those things, but you’re not really gonna understand like the dynamic unless you get the two of those things together to some degree. And we’re still seeing that in terms of the, uh, you know, the way that, but I think you’re right that the, you know, the economic piece of that.

You know, was easy to underestimate or to, or to file away as, you know, subject to partisanship, sour, you know, or whatever. Right. Any number of things that not giving, it’s like, oh, you know, Republicans don’t want to give, you know, credit to a democratic president for a recovering economy, fine. But this is the point you say, yeah, but that doesn’t apply to TE Republicans evaluating Texas economy.

Right. Or their own personal economic situations. And that’s, I think, the thing where, you know, it’s gonna be interesting to see. What I mean to me, what this infrastructure piece looks like. I mean, to the sense, you know, why, why are the teachers, or not the teachers, the state employees, sort of the one kind.

It’s like, you know what, cuz that’s easy in some ways because the reality is, is that, you know, their, their pay is not keeping up with inflation. There’s, it doesn’t matter what scandal you read about in what Department of Government, almost always they, they’re talking about. vacancies and positions. The difficulty of hiring people.

I mean, this is almost just a level setting that needs to happen because ultimately they can build all kinds of new infrastructure. They can build an amazing new, you know, center for, you know, child and protective services. But if nobody works there, it doesn’t really matter. Right? Yeah. And so there is some basics that they kind of just.

I think need to do. But, but again, this isn’t the sort of stuff that’s going to be noticed immediately, all of which could carry the day in a rational discussion. Yeah. , ah, . So, uh, you know, I, I think, we’ll, let’s hang it up there. Yeah. I mean, I, I think if we’re gonna kind of, you know, walk away from this, you know, I, I think while, you know, everyone including us strives to read tea leaves at this point in the process, you know, We’re now in a slightly more concrete, but still very early stage of where, where we are in the legislature.

I mean, I think it leads almost inevitably, particularly among us, these bigger like Yeah. And, but there’s all this other bigger stuff going on , right? Yeah. Right. You know, and I think, you know, some of the key things, you know, that we’re wa are still yet to be determined in terms of where this session falls between 2019 and 21.

Mm-hmm. 2021, a lot of things are still in play. . You know, I mean, I think if, you know, what am I watching this week? How much does you know, or what, you know, what are we still watching? How much does the kind of drumbeat from the g o p far right influence the agenda? I think that’s still not quite clear. Oh yeah.

I have no idea. And, and, and that’s because a lot of their, their influence is likely to, it typically is later in the process, you know, as they can be obstructive or they. Moments to profile more. And then how much of this know kind of growing background on infrastructure, you know? And you know, one thing that I just want to kind of highlight from what the discussion we had, this really is still a very broad discussion and, and that.

Is it in part a function of the objective conditions you’re talking about? Mm-hmm. in which the, the, the lag between growth and infrastructure in the state, which is kind of undeniable, but also, you know, the presence of all of this money. And I think we should Yes. You know, come back and before we, you know, want something we didn’t elaborate too much on, but to the flag, again as a takeaway, that budget did.

A lot of money set aside so that at this point nobody’s talking about breaking the spending cap. A lot of these big infrastructural measures and for that matter, property tax reduction. can be addressed in ways that take advantage of har safe harbors that are either in the Constitution mm-hmm. or in statutes that enable you to dedicate funds in a way that are not, that don’t fall within the spending cap.

Right. So you can have constitutional elections on things. Yeah. That are already created funds for things like property tax reduction, frankly, that you can divert into those funds. That don’t count against the spending cap or a comp, you know, complicate that. You can put it to the voters, right? And that which is the constitutional piece, the easiest way to do it, which is the constitutional piece, right?

And so, You know, a lot of that, I think, you know, the, you know, the, the, the true strategies have yet to gel here. But I do think that that’s an indication of that because, you know, I’ve been in a few discussions recently where somebody says, yeah, the spending cap, and people go, well, yeah. But you could just, yeah.

You know, just let the voters decide that they’re gonna give them themselves a tax cut. Right. Or, or, you know, or move it into some of these funds that are already Right. Statutorily exempt. and we’re created for that reason. Right, right. And so I think those are some of the things. Wait a minute, Jim. It’s not a hard spending cap.

Right. You know, fancy that. Yeah. And remember, you know, with a super majority, you can vote to break spending cap. It has been done before. The leadership doesn’t love to do it, but there have been moments when if it means, you know, staying for extra time or getting out early, the pressure kind of builds on those votes on the members.

Both their internal personal pressures and the overall pressure, you know, is. Yeah. So, so with that, uh, thanks to Josh for being here today. Thanks again to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts here at the University of Texas at Austin. If you’re listening to this podcast directly through one of the podcast distributors, you can also go to our website, Texas politics.tex.edu.

We generally have a post where we have some of the contextual data. I will almost certainly do that today. So Texas politics.tex.edu. Go to the blog section. Thanks for listening, and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.