June 7th, 2023 – It’s Patrick vs. Abbott & Phelan as property tax reduction roils Texas Republicans

[00:00:00] Intro: Welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party. Sir, I’ll tell people on a regular basis, there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution, they have become the norm.

[00:00:24] Intro: At what point? Must a female senator raise her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?

[00:00:36] 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. Happy to be joined this summer week by Josh Blank, research director for same Texas Politics Project. Summer Morning, Josh.

[00:00:53] Josh Blank: He says that looking at me in shorts and sandals, I guess you could say that.

[00:00:59] Jim Henson: Yeah, I, you know, I thought maybe either you’re. I’m

[00:01:01] Josh Blank: wearing a full tux on top though.

[00:01:03] Jim Henson: Yeah. We’ll make this doubly in, in insider. You’re either feeling very summary and or maybe going to lunch with one of your colleagues in the government department.

[00:01:12] Josh Blank: It’s kind of Yeah,

[00:01:14] Jim Henson: that’s actually what I’m doing tomorrow.

[00:01:16] Jim Henson: Yeah. Um, so, uh, that’s said we will, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll just, we’ll move away as quickly as we can from the visuals of the podcast. So, you know, speaking of the podcast, since we are last here, um, S still more going on. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I we’re recording this week on a Wednesday because I was outta town and I appreciate everybody on this end accommodating that.

[00:01:42] Jim Henson: Um, you know, when we met last week, it was like, whoa, earthquake. Yeah. Right. The session had ended. They had not passed property tax bill. Attorney General had been impeached and the governor had just called a special session and called everybody back immediately. And the

[00:02:01] Josh Blank: ho And I think by that point the house had the house.

[00:02:03] Josh Blank: No, it was, it was that

[00:02:04] Jim Henson: day. Okay, great. Okay. It was, I, it was, I think that was sort of happening as we were recording the podcast. Right? Well, too Toit. Yeah. Yeah. Um. You know, the house went into special session, uh, that day suspended the rules to pass two bills that were tailored to the governor’s special session call, and then gaveled out aggressively as, as several people have noted, including the lieutenant governor Gaveled out signing die.

[00:02:30] Jim Henson: In other words, uh, basically said, okay, we’ve done what the governor has asked us to do. We are now leaving again, or, you know, we are now going to actually leave, which we had been hoping to do the night before. Now, you know, just to refresh everybody’s memory, two bills that were, or the two subjects that were on the governor’s call for a special session.

[00:02:54] Jim Henson: Um, We’re very specific, uh, with Leg. You know, he called for legislation to cut property tax rates, and I’m quoting from the call solely by reducing the school district maximum compressed tax rate in order to provide lasting property tax relief for Texas taxpayers. Okay? And we’re gonna focus on that I think today, but also, Uh, he also called for legislation that was solely for the purpose of increasing or enhancing the penalties for certain criminal conduct involving the smuggling of persons or the operation of a stash house.

[00:03:29] Jim Henson: I’m pretty sure, almost certainly the first time the phrase stash house, yes. Say, appeared in a call for a special

[00:03:36] Josh Blank: session, but it’s in a good session where they defined drag, you know, drag performance and legislation and.

[00:03:41] Jim Henson: Stash house. But has, but as has been widely commented, these are very specific. Yes.

[00:03:45] Jim Henson: Yeah. In there, in, in what they’re calling for. Um, so the house came in, uh, again, suspended the rules so that the bills didn’t have to, you know, go through all the pauses in terms of the scheduling of committee hearings, uh, the process, you know, the hearing of the bills, and then the movement of the bills.

[00:04:06] Jim Henson: Through the process. Delays between, yeah. Which should have, had they followed this, the, the. Normal process that would’ve taken at least. Some matter of days. Yeah. I mean, you’d imagine, I mean, we can sit there and add ’em all up, but it, you know. Yeah. To do it on a, on a more leisurely schedule, it would’ve been a couple, at least two to three days.

[00:04:25] Jim Henson: Yeah. At least, you know, I mean, you know, you kind of think about what the layout rules are. If you weren’t suspending any of the rules. Yeah. And the referrals and all that, you know, would’ve taken some days they did not do it that way. They did something that led a lot of people to say, you know, the house is looking a lot like the Senate.

[00:04:41] Jim Henson: I mean, I heard a lot of. Inside kind of grumbling, even people that are taking the house’s side and the House Senate by kind of saying, well, you know, there does seem like, you know, we always knew that the rules are very flexible. Or as you know, people colloquial say there are no real rules in the Senate.

[00:05:00] Jim Henson: Yeah. And again, not true, but the sense. But I mean, I have, you know, several people kind of going, you know, what is going on here where the house is gonna come in and suspend all the rules and do this and get out. I mean, there’s a sense that the. It was yet another sign that the process has really changed for people that follow this a lot.

[00:05:19] Jim Henson: Yeah. Right. Or have been following it for a long time now. We can explain all that by the politics and we want to,

[00:05:24] Josh Blank: well, just, and just to be fair, I mean, just to make a, just, you know, you know, I love to give people benefit of the doubt. I mean, just to be fair here, they also did move out to bills that they had already.

[00:05:32] Josh Blank: They had already gone through the process. Yeah. They,

[00:05:34] Jim Henson: they, well, There were some editing,

[00:05:36] Josh Blank: but, but I mean, but, but primarily the idea is the main vehicle. Yeah. We’re starting from scratch. So, so, I mean, just for the think of like why you have all those delays and those pieces. I mean, generally it’s so that like there’s time to consider, there’s time for the public to weigh in, but if, if the feeling was, look, we’ve already considered this, the public has weighed in, you could make the case that all those steps and delays or maybe not as essential to the, the public process, if not the inside process.

[00:05:59] Josh Blank: So what you’re saying

[00:06:00] Jim Henson: is you’re kind of, you are kind of on the side of the house. I’m just kidding. Uh,

[00:06:04] Josh Blank: yeah, I was gonna say, uh, not, not till the end, so

[00:06:07] Jim Henson: don’t ask me. Um, but no, no, I think that’s right. I mean, look, you raise a good point that those rules have a reason. Yeah. And they assume kind of a certain setting and context.

[00:06:18] Jim Henson: I’m gonna

[00:06:18] Josh Blank: post at the beginning of a post the bill so people can read it and people can have time to show up and generate some arguments for and against it. Like, but again, we’re the, we’re, we’re past that

[00:06:27] Jim Henson: part. I mean, we’ve had that happen. Right. And, and that, and you know, for those of, you know, for those that watched the relatively brief, Proceeding.

[00:06:33] Jim Henson: When those two bills were laid out, the bill sponsors came and said, Hey members, this is just, yeah, you know, we’ve talked about this, you’ve seen this bill before, you’ve, these are the things that we’ve changed to tailor to, you know, what was in the special call and, you know, let’s get it on. Yep. And they did happily.

[00:06:49] Jim Henson: So essentially they passed those two bills and on the first day of the, what you know, is allowed to be a 30 day special session, they got it done in a few hours and gaveled out and everybody. More or less went home. Yeah. And left it this bill. Then in, you know, it was basically here’s to the Senate and to Lieutenant Governor Patrick.

[00:07:09] Jim Henson: Here you go. We’ve, we’ve done what the governor asked. How about you? And, you know,

[00:07:12] Josh Blank: this is a, you know, a lot of people seem to sort of miss this kind of key point about wh what happened here and what it meant. Right. Because the house gaveled outside I, which means they say we’re, we’ve basically, we’re not setting a day to come back.

[00:07:23] Josh Blank: It’s without a day is what it means. And basically it’s a legislative body. If they don’t set a day to come back, they’re not gonna come back until either constitutionally required to do so, or the governor calls them back. The important point for the, what you understand about the politics of this is that what it means is it created a take it or leave it situation with the Texas Senate because of the Texas Senate, because you know, again, government 1 0 1, right the same bill has to pass both chambers and then be signed by the governor.

[00:07:48] Josh Blank: Because the house passed this bill to the Senate and then left any changes the Senate make the house could not physically ratify, right? Cuz they’re not there. And so therefore that creates the situation automatically that says, here’s the bill, take it or leave it. Because if you do anything, it’s automatically dead.

[00:08:04] Josh Blank: Right?

[00:08:04] Jim Henson: So two points to make about that one. He said this was basically a. I’d say my way or the highway, but since the house here just snuggled right up and aligned with what the governor wanted is sort of our way or the highway, is the message to Lieutenant Governor Patrick and the Texas Senate. Um, now the other point that we should be as an asterisk, and we’re gonna come to this again, but we’ll, is it.

[00:08:30] Jim Henson: There is a provision in the Constitution that is open to interpretation and, but that the Lieutenant Governor certainly interprets a certain way, which we’ll get to. Uh, and, and then we’ll just read it. Article three, section 17 of the, of the Constitutions. Is subtitled adjournments, and it says neither house.

[00:08:49] Jim Henson: Neither house shall without the consent of the other adjourn for more than three days, nor to any other place than that where the legislature may be sitting. So I guess there, you know, we could unpack this, you know, and go down this rabbit hole and, you know, I’ve talked to a couple people though. You know, the, our par, you know, the parliamentarians are a little too busy to ask about this, although I suspect we would get different versions from the two parliamentarians.

[00:09:16] Jim Henson: But the governor, you know, Lieutenant Governor Patrick is saying, look, you guys could come back. Now I, the motion to adjourn sinny dies. I would understand it would be the motion to adjourn Sinny die. We’ll, we’ll look in the rules and again, we’ll try to figure it out last the parliament for the parliamentarians out there listening or fa pastor or future, you know, please feel free to drop an email in your view of this, cuz I, you know, I would, I’m honestly interested in what the arguments are.

[00:09:41] Jim Henson: Yeah. Just

[00:09:42] Josh Blank: to throw two questions into that hopper for the parliamentarians out there. As long as you’re gonna do our work for us. Could you, you know, well, yeah, I mean, one, I would say, you know, is there any, you know, should we, You know, a special session versus the regular session as different entities.

[00:09:53] Josh Blank: You know, as far as we interpret this, number one and number two, I mean, one other thought, you know, this is sort of the social scientist in me, whatever says, well, you know, during the, the regular session, both chambers regularly adjourn, you know, for longer than three days, like around holiday weekends, for example.

[00:10:10] Josh Blank: You know, things like that. Right? Does the other chamber need to, has, has the other chamber historically signed off on that? Always straight up on that.

[00:10:16] Jim Henson: Yeah. So signed off on that.

[00:10:18] Josh Blank: Yeah. The idea is that, you know, is this really something that’s like, yeah, this is in here and we should initiate this now? Or is this something like, this is, it’s actually a reflection of practice that like we just didn’t know about because it’s so kind of

[00:10:27] Jim Henson: proforma and is and is there something more unique and, and.

[00:10:35] Jim Henson: And distinctive about a signee die adjournment. Right.

[00:10:39] Josh Blank: As opposed to as I’m just saying, as opposed to setting a specific

[00:10:41] Jim Henson: date. Right. It’s, you know, in other words, you know, Is there an adjournment and then there’s a sin die adjournment? Or is a sin die? Just a trivial subset of adjournments and so it falls under this.

[00:10:52] Jim Henson: Okay. Bonus points that, all questions that, you know, and, um, I’ve got somebody I was gonna try to text about the main, would have at least a strong view of this and, uh, have not gotten a reply yet, but I’m gonna work on that. So, You know, let’s, let’s, so we’re, you know, I mean I think what, you know, we have to talk about for at least a bit is the politics of the disagreement between the two chambers.

[00:11:11] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And that touches on some of the policy things, but really the politics and, and now what this axis of conflict looks like with the governor and the speaker on one side. Yeah. At least apparently. And the lieutenant Governor on the other. And that’s certainly, yeah. And I mean, you a public pose right now and I think you have to think about this in a fairly Russian kind of way, you know, to.

[00:11:34] Jim Henson: Think, well, there’s some other real thing going on here, but I, you know, I don’t know about that. I, I

[00:11:39] Josh Blank: don’t either. Well, just, uh, just to finish out the timeline, cause I mean, most of you already know this, but I wanna make sure it’s clear, you know. So the, so the governor put out that very specific special session call.

[00:11:46] Josh Blank: The house very quickly approved a measure that they said met explicitly, the governor’s special session call, they adjourned, signing die. But the important point here is that in addition, then the governor came back and basically tweeted. That’s it. They did it. This is great. Good workhouse. Good workhouse.

[00:12:02] Josh Blank: Expect the Senate to move this along and we can go. So, I mean, he, he didn’t just, you know, it wasn’t just like we’re interpreting that the governor’s on the house. The governor, yeah. Put his finger. Now this is important because the entire legislative session is, the House and Senate have been, I would say negotiating, but that’s almost too generous, I’d say sort of, you know, fighting whatever you want to call it, in conflict over the method of ation negotiated

[00:12:22] Jim Henson: publicly for.

[00:12:24] Jim Henson: F 130 days. Yeah.

[00:12:27] Josh Blank: So, yeah, exactly. 120 maybe. Yeah, they fought for 160, but, so, but ultimately, you know, the governor, a lot of people noted that the governor had not entered this debate throughout the regular session. No point. Was it clear, at least publicly, that he was in favor of one approach or the other?

[00:12:42] Josh Blank: I think, you know, again, just to be honest here as a, you know, quote unquote expert, you know, My guess was that he had no preference. In some ways, whichever one would pass would be fine, but this was obviously a very different thing. We get to the special session and now the governor immediately said, okay, I’m on.

[00:12:56] Josh Blank: This is what I want, and this is what side I’m on, on this. Which

[00:12:59] Jim Henson: is, you know, who I think agrees with your assessment of the governor’s preferences here, the Lieutenant Governor. Yeah. Um, sure. So, you know, yeah. I mean, from the outset of the session, Lieutenant Governor Patrick had advocated for a relatively simple approach.

[00:13:15] Jim Henson: All things being equal, that emphasized an increase in the homestead exemption for residential property owners only. Mm-hmm. Which efforts? Some back and forth wound up settling in the final days of the session as an exemption to a hundred thousand. Right. Which was a, a counter proposal that came from the house basically.

[00:13:33] Jim Henson: And that’s just the set piece now it seems. Right. And the house. Yeah. And, and that has now become the governor’s. Preferred position and why not makes sense to me. Um, you know, from his perspective. Uh, and then a house approach during session that focused on lowering the appraisal caps. Mm-hmm. Um, the limit on appraisal caps or the, the appraisal

[00:13:50] Josh Blank: caps.

[00:13:50] Josh Blank: So how much your assessed value can go up from one, you know, assessment to the next, basically for the purposes of taxability. Right

[00:13:57] Jim Henson: now, the governor’s approach, as we’ve said, only really only unveiled in the special session call near, as I can tell, calls for a public release. For a more complex but broad-based approach that would lower what is known as the compressed tax rate and that that draws in part on the approach that was implemented most recently in legislation passed in 2019.

[00:14:17] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And it’s worth noting, and we’ll come back to this in a sec, that. If sustained, this would eventually, at least, theoretically result in reducing those rates to zero.

[00:14:30] Josh Blank: That’s my understanding of it. I mean, some, again, someone can, can, you know, tell us otherwise, but just,

[00:14:33] Jim Henson: I think it’s also the, again, also lieutenant government’s

[00:14:35] Josh Blank: understanding.

[00:14:36] Josh Blank: Well, and I, and I’m not ready to jump in and say that we’re all analyzing this from the same point of view, right? I mean, but part of this is just math, right? The idea being here, if we’re looking at the state for like average assessed rates, and then the idea is, is that those. Taxing entities that are above the average need to somehow lower their rates.

[00:14:52] Josh Blank: Ultimately, if you think about it, what you’re doing is you’re taking, you know, essentially distribution, half people are below the median, half people are above the median. You say to the people who are above the median, you gotta lower it. Well, next time the median moves down and that just happens subsequently over and over again.

[00:15:04] Josh Blank: Yeah. That’s on purpose. Yeah. And that’s on purpose. But just to just understand, so like, how does that work? That’s just, it’s some pretty simple math actually. Right? You know, you just take out the people on the high end, the average goes down. That’s all that we’re talking

[00:15:14] Jim Henson: about here. Yeah. And it’s, you know, appro it approach and so it will approach and if left to its own devices reach

[00:15:20] Josh Blank: zero.

[00:15:21] Josh Blank: Yeah. At the limit, I guess they say. Right.

[00:15:23] Jim Henson: So, you know, So from the outset of the session, the Lieutenant governor, I mean, has, has been very much against the house approach. Yeah. Extremely said that he had favored it earlier on his career. He is seen the light. He thinks his approach was, was the smarter

[00:15:39] Josh Blank: approach.

[00:15:39] Josh Blank: Not only that, but their approach is wrong. I mean, it wasn’t, I mean, I would say, I mean, be not, you know, it wasn’t, well, you know, we can all be this No, it’s like that. But, but in the end I know that that’s

[00:15:47] Jim Henson: wrong now. Right. And, and you know, to give, uh, Well, every Texan’s, Dick Levine a another name check.

[00:15:54] Jim Henson: Yeah. Has he got one from the Lieutenant Governor though? He mispronounce his name. Well, you know. Well, you know, kind of. Well, anyway. Anyway. Um. You w you know, he’s g dick. Put together a good analysis for every Texan, a lot of good graphics, and we’ll link that when we, uh, create a link for this podcast at the Texas Politics Project website@texaspolitics.uex.edu.

[00:16:18] Jim Henson: Um, We’ll include a link to that analysis. Okay. Cause I think it’s, it’s useful. Um, now, you know, I’ll extract us from the policy press.

[00:16:30] Josh Blank: Oh, thank God. Okay. You’re sweating

[00:16:31] Jim Henson: over here. Yeah. Even dressed for summer, you’re sweating. Yeah. No, this is, you know, what has followed, uh, you know, and I, I, I’m conscious of reducing this to the politics, but the politics are institutionally and I think historically important.

[00:16:50] Jim Henson: What’s followed is the most open conflict we’ve seen between the governor and the lieutenant governor since they were both elected to their offices in 2014. Now, that’s not to say that from. Even that very first day that they were both inaugurated, right? That there hasn’t been perpetual speculation, even assumption that the relationship has always been something of a rivalry.

[00:17:14] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And has always been difficult. The

[00:17:17] Josh Blank: truth is that both of them have forged such different political paths. Uh, and really, you know, and not to say that they don’t, you know, have share, obviously substantially overlap in constituencies, but just, you know, in substance and in style, they’ve really been.

[00:17:32] Josh Blank: Just very, you know, I mean, honestly just different politicians and I think, you know, in some ways, to the extent that you have seen some open conflict, not like this, but open conflict between them, usually some of those underlying, I think, you know, again, sense of style, sense of where they fit in the ecosystem.

[00:17:47] Josh Blank: Yeah. You know, that can, that can really inform a lot of that discussion. I think we kind of are gonna see that here too. Right? I mean, to your said, that’s what reduce it all to the politics, but when the politics and the policy and the personality all seem to go in the same direction because politics didn’t come from nowhere.

[00:18:00] Josh Blank: Right? Right.

[00:18:00] Jim Henson: Exactly. You know? Yeah. I mean, I think from the very beginning, you know, it’s fair to say that, you know, Lieutenant Governor Patrick had come to the office through the Senate, you know, prior to that being a talk radio personality and a. You know, and that was his entree into politics. It was much hotter.

[00:18:18] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, governor Abbott had been, you know, essentially, you know, a guy who’d come up through the system. He had been a judge, he had been Attorney General, UT Law School, you know, the whole Right. You know, very different paths, very different kind of approaches to to, to politics and to governance for that matter.

[00:18:37] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. So,

[00:18:39] Josh Blank: I’d also, you know, I just wanna add one more thing as we’re sitting here talking about it, but the other piece of this too is because they both entered, you know, again, Offices at the same time. And really, you know, again, at the same time, and also in a similar position in some ways, you know, Abbott’s coming in on the heels of Perry’s long tenure in a lot of ways.

[00:18:54] Josh Blank: You know, the idea is that historically the Texas governor is considered a relatively weak position in the, in the Texas Lieutenant Governor is considered a very strong position. But at the end of Perry’s term, in a lot of ways that dynamic had slipped, been trans, had been transposed. That’s exactly right.

[00:19:07] Josh Blank: Yeah. And so Perry was the strong one, you know, former Lieutenant Governor Dewhurst was seen as being rather weak. By, you know, certainly by comparison or historically even, potentially, I don’t know. I’d have to ask somebody else about that. And in some ways, both of them, you know, in the case of of AB of Abbott, he was trying to, you know, maintain at least as much of that, you know, power and juice in the system as Perry had, or at least get back to it close soon.

[00:19:27] Josh Blank: And for, uh, Patrick, I mean the, in, you know, I mean, you can see he’s done this, the goal and the effort and really the consequences has been to reinvigorate and strengthen the office of Lieutenant Governor. Right. And, and that’s, I mean, look, that’s necessarily gonna create a certain amount of friction because there’s only so much power in the system.

[00:19:42] Josh Blank: Right? This is actually somewhat a zero sum game at some point.

[00:19:44] Jim Henson: Yeah. I mean, I think that, I, I think that’s, that’s, yeah. I mean, I agree with most of that. I mean, I think that, It’s set up, you know, these two, these two offices are set up to be rivals. Yeah. You can see that it’s part of the constitutional design is that mm-hmm.

[00:19:58] Jim Henson: You know, that’s why, you know, the lieutenant governor is not the vice president. Right. Right. By any means, you know. Right. Um, as we’ve seen in pretty stark terms, so, you know, and I, and I think that, so, you know, in the, so in the immediate aftermath of the house’s, kind of in and out, special response to the special session.

[00:20:18] Jim Henson: Like, you know, I think we have to under, you know, you can’t really overemphasize to my mind that this was basically twice in the space of about 10 days that the house said. Here you go, Senate. Here you go, Lieutenant Governor. Here’s this flaming bag of, you know what, the first was the impeachment of Lieutenant Governor of the, of the attorney general.

[00:20:40] Jim Henson: The second was then this. Okay, we’ve just done what the governor wants. You’re gonna go along with it. Are you gonna put up a big

[00:20:46] Josh Blank: fuss? Right? We, no, even, even worse than that, actually, we just passed the biggest. Tax cut in Texas history and it’s just waiting on the Lieutenant Governor and the Senate to

[00:20:56] Jim Henson: approve it.

[00:20:57] Jim Henson: Right. And this after, you know, again, to be fair, we don’t want, you know, that’s the thing about this, these conflicts, you know, when you start, the story can make. Work to the advantage of once the appearance of one side or the other. Fair to say that earlier in the session, Lieutenant Governor had been doing a lot of that because of his control of the Senate.

[00:21:16] Jim Henson: They rammed a lot of legislation through very, they moved a lot of it, I shouldn’t say rammed. They moved a lot of it very quickly and then said to the house, Hey, what are you guys doing? They’re taking a four day weekend. Weekend. Yeah. We just, we just gave a, the biggest tax, we just passed the, to your point, we just passed the biggest tax gun.

[00:21:30] Jim Henson: Why are you taking this Texas history? Why did he. What are you guys doing over

[00:21:33] Josh Blank: there? Taking a four day weekend that apparently we approved You could do. Right? I’m just kidding. So, you

[00:21:38] Jim Henson: know. Anyway, um, you know, so there’s a lot of this going on, but, you know, so the immediate aftermath of the house going in and doing and passing these bills and sending ’em over to the Senate with big ribbon around them.

[00:21:52] Jim Henson: We’ll switch metaphors. Yeah. You know, was a, you know, a flurry of rhetorical bomb throwing by Lieutenant Governor Patrick by his allies. Um, approval of the house’s action by the governor, and really mostly just kind of a satisfied silence from the house, I mean, on social media. Twitter, et cetera. You know, there were some house members kind of strutting, but speaker himself, you know, couple of formal statements.

[00:22:18] Jim Henson: We’ve done our stuff. Look forward to the Senate, you know, ratifying our

[00:22:21] Josh Blank: work and speaker speakers press, people are still responding, but in a very, you know, measured if playful way. Right, right.

[00:22:28] Jim Henson: Because, and why wouldn’t they? Right now they’re probably feeling pretty good, right? So that all led to a, a press conference that the Lieutenant Governor held just yesterday as we record this on, on Wednesday, held this, this presser on Tuesday, and we’ll link this to the podcast as well.

[00:22:44] Jim Henson: Um, so, you know, kind of a. Slight, you know, odd in some ways. I mean, there’s a lot of odd things about this anyway. Yeah. But Alina, a little bit of a tour de force, you know, kind of classic Dan Patrick performance, frankly. Um, yeah. Come becoming one, you know, he, he pressed the advantage on the politics of this and the kind of, You know, in the sense of saying the Senate plan, that you know that, and he, and you know, he advocated a bargaining position here that was basically combination of compression.

[00:23:14] Jim Henson: Yeah. And, and, uh, the, the raising of the homestead exemption. Um, but he kind of phrased it as, you know, we want to give more Texans and, and focus on Texas homeowners rather than giving business. Right. You know, something. And he did, you know, I thought of an effective job of going through the numbers, demonstrating that, you know, he had, you know, he’s not just reading from a script.

[00:23:40] Jim Henson: He, he, he seems to get what he’s advocating here. Yeah. I would argue. I think so for sure. And, and yeah, I think it took advantage of the fact that frankly, allowing for the fact that we are now, we have now gone down several forks in the road when we started. In, you know, the late fall or the winter of, of last year and early in the session saying, we have all this money, we can do anything we want with it right now.

[00:24:06] Jim Henson: Allowing for the fact that we’ve gone down a couple of forks to say, and one of the biggest things we’re gonna do is property taxes, and we’ll come back to that y. You know, I think there are a lot of people out there in the policy community that think that that prefer the Lieutenant Governor’s approach, and not all of them are the usual suspects.

[00:24:24] Jim Henson: Again, given the predicate and the pap dependency of where we are now. Yeah. You know, he’s onto something there. And he leveraged that in the press conference by, you know, quoting press coverage and our friend Mark Jones at Rice. And, you know, looking at, I, I think it was Bob Garrett from the Dallas Morning News, giving him the kind of right Bob sort of, you know, I mean a lot of it was really, you know, proved.

[00:24:49] Jim Henson: You know, entertaining, if you will. Well, well, well, what’s interesting in there and then, and then just to close the loop, that’s also where he, where he mentioned that Dick Levine from every Texan had been quoted as saying that of these plans. And that’s why I’m emphasizing the pap dependency. This one is sort of, I, I think the fair way to put it is probably.

[00:25:08] Jim Henson: Less advantageous to the top of the income distribution than are the other alternatives. Well, isn’t

[00:25:15] Josh Blank: that just like, okay, like pause for a second, right? I mean, like, this is the thing that you find that’s fair. I mean, like, and I, and I don’t wanna use this term cuz you and I have got, you know, I mean, it’s, say you and I, you’ve, you have a lot of consternation over the use of this term and I’m gonna throw it out there anyway, even though I know you’re not gonna like it.

[00:25:29] Josh Blank: But it’s weird seeing, you know, I like the term weird. Wait, you know, it’s like Dan Patrick, the populist. Yeah. Right. I mean, there’s this sort of, no, there’s an interesting element to this, which basically says, you know, all of a sudden, you know, you’ve got Dan Patricks and you’re saying, well, you know, the problem with the house plan you see is that it helps businesses enrich people too much.

[00:25:49] Josh Blank: Yeah. And it’s like, now look, facts are facts, right? I mean, this is the difference between if we take a hundred thousand dollars off the bottom, right? Yeah. That becomes a very, I mean, in a lot of ways, that becomes a pretty progressive, you know, Basically tax break in a sense, right? If you go, I know it’s not, it’s not progressive.

[00:26:06] Josh Blank: It’s not progressive, but it’s less regressive. It’s Yeah, it’s not, yeah, well, right. It’s regressive because it only affects homeowners. So, I mean, it’s still regressive, but it’s less regressive than, say, just taking a fixed percentage off whatever the value is or whatever. Which obviously than if you have talking about larger values, it ends up being a lot more money.

[00:26:21] Josh Blank: And that’s what, if you go into the Dick Levine analysis, that’s what you’re gonna see essentially, right? The compression is going to the benefits. You can look at the benefits and where they get distributed amongst different income groups in Texas of each policy and the compression, you know, the benefits, you know, are significantly more skewed towards upper income and people and and businesses.

[00:26:38] Josh Blank: But the other side of this too is, you know, what’s kind of interesting to me also just sort of in hearing it out loud, cause you never hear in some ways policy and politics in such like just. Just base. Damn. I mean like really just base terms. Just like, look, they agreed to a dollar figure about 12 billion right?

[00:26:52] Josh Blank: To cover these new, this new round of property tax cuts. And really the question just is, you know, and I mean the way that Dan Patrick put it in other good ways, are we gonna give a hundred percent of that? To homeowners on their primary residence to be clear, or are we gonna split that up between homeowners and also owners of commercial properties and all this other stuff?

[00:27:10] Josh Blank: Right, right. And look, and then in the end you say, well, how much is the average homeowner gonna save? Well, obviously if we give a hundred percent of those to homeowners are gonna save more than if we spread him around. And so the politics of this, I mean, he’s, you know, again, he’s not Yeah. Wrong. And the other issue, of course, is this thing that you brought up before.

[00:27:26] Josh Blank: You know, to the extent that you know, and again, it, it makes for weird, you know, Makes for strange bedfellows, right? Yeah. Where Dan Patrick is sort of not relying on, but using the analyses of university types, you know, let’s just say university types. That’s a good, that’s a good broad right. Sweep, you know, in, in justifying his plan.

[00:27:44] Josh Blank: I mean, you know, ultimately it’s just a, it’s just, it’s just odd, right? Right. I mean, but it’s, but it’s also not entirely wrong right. In, in the grand scheme of things, because as we were talking about before, The reason that these sort of university types are saying are kind of siding in a lot of ways with this plan, besides the fact that it’s less, uh, regressive is because of what we talked about before.

[00:28:04] Josh Blank: Ultimately, if you go with this compression, Plan, I’ll call it, I don’t wanna call it a scheme, I don’t love that word, but let’s call it congression plan. Ultimately, at some point, you know, it creates a governance problem because where does revenue come from? And ultimately there’s no appetite among any of these Republican elected officials, right, to generate new revenue from elsewhere.

[00:28:22] Josh Blank: And so given that there is sort of, there is an aspect of this that sort of, I mean, to my mind, kind of raises issues of like, Timelines, like political timelines and sort of the political calculations of the different players

[00:28:32] Jim Henson: involved. Right. And again, I think we talked about it last, we’ve, we’ve mentioned it a couple times.

[00:28:36] Jim Henson: I mean, you know, There has been admission of this in open court. Yeah. That, you know, the, the political time horizon on this now, the governor, but the, the lieutenant governor in his, in his press conference also used that an interesting way. Yeah. By basically kind of calling BS on the idea that you’re ever gonna get property taxes down to zero.

[00:28:57] Jim Henson: That that’s a realistic. That’s anything other than a fantasy, right? From his, you know, was the way he came. Well, you know, but to

[00:29:03] Josh Blank: paraphrase, but this is ultimately the issue here, which is that the idea that the Texas legislature is gonna do anything that’s like politically palatable from the sense that we need functioning government to decrease property taxes in any meaningful and sustainable way.

[00:29:16] Josh Blank: That’s the fantasy here that no one really wants to address, particularly

[00:29:20] Jim Henson: in the absence of any other significant adjustments in the sources of revenue. Well, that’s what I’m saying. I mean, for localities or the state wri

[00:29:26] Josh Blank: large. Well, it’s the thing, there’s just no, and there’s no appetite to increase revenues anywhere else.

[00:29:30] Josh Blank: And so part of what it comes down to is remember, you know, we don’t have a statewide income tax. We don’t have a statewide property tax. So when they talk about. You know, adjusting property tax rates. What they’re really talking about fundamentally is taking on a larger share of the, of the, of the funding that goes to public schools.

[00:29:45] Josh Blank: Right. And what’s interesting, I mean, the lieutenant governor, you know, and he said this, you know, I mean, for, for a long time, I mean, he’s been really, you know, consistent about this. Whenever anyone would raise in previous sessions like, oh, why don’t you know, you, we should use, you know, the, the rainy day funds gained so big, the economic stabilization front, the severance fund, whatever, the severance tax on gas royalties.

[00:30:03] Josh Blank: Just to be specific here, he’s like, People always say before session, why don’t we use this to give teachers a pay raise? Why don’t we use this for this? And, and I think this is a reasonable argument. Say, Hey, look, those are ongoing expenses. We can’t just do that with, with the surplus money over here because we we’re not gonna have it anymore for the next session.

[00:30:17] Josh Blank: That’s a, that’s a continu deal.

[00:30:18] Jim Henson: You do this, you have to really commit to it and understand what. The downline, the downstream consequences

[00:30:24] Josh Blank: are right. And what’s interesting is that, you know, when you, but when you talk about these property tax cuts, because they’re totally divorced, you know, at least in the, in the, in the public discussion from any discussion of public school financing, it’s almost as if like, you know, the fact that we’re using a budget surplus money, we didn’t think we were gonna have to do this.

[00:30:41] Josh Blank: It sort of ignores the fact that, you know, we might not have this money next time. This might may not be there, and yet we’re on the hook for this. Now, what’s interesting about the Lieutenant Governor’s plan in some ways versus the governors is that like if property values continue to go up, it actually eats into that tax cut, right?

[00:30:55] Josh Blank: Right. And so really that tax cut is going to, you know, degrade and value over time. So long as property values go up slowly over time or quickly, it doesn’t matter if they go down. That’s another story. But assuming that, you know, Texas continues to grow, the economy continues to grow here, housing continues to be a problem in most places where it’s pretty desirable to live, it’s reasonable to expect property values to continue to increase a little bit, which means the value of this tax cut is just gonna go down over time.

[00:31:19] Josh Blank: Right? But again, that speaks to kind of ri the timeline and horizon. I mean, to some extent, to my mind being someone who just looks at politics without apology, although I apologize about it sometimes, I’m not gonna apologize about here. You know, there is something to the searchers to say, you know, if your goal is to deliver a tax cut to voters that they can feel, which is I think what the Lieutenant Governor’s really looking for, given he’s gonna run right.

[00:31:40] Josh Blank: One more time. Al. I mean, certainly we expect, yeah, we expect him to run one more time. I don’t expect him to necessarily run another time after that. We’ll see. I would think not, but let’s say he’s gonna run one more time. The fastest way to make sure you get the most dollars into homeowner’s pockets that they can notice is gonna be through the homestead exemption.

[00:31:56] Josh Blank: Right. But the. But, you know, and again, and on the other side of it with the compression, the idea is it’s like, well, do voters notice that their taxes didn’t go up as quick as they have been going up? Right. Well, and, and, and there’s a little bit, there’s, you could also, you could have a reduction too, in,

[00:32:10] Jim Henson: to be fair, and I, you know, and, and, you know, two points to expand on that.

[00:32:14] Jim Henson: I mean, one, I mean on the, the, the most immediate point. And the lieutenant governor was very clear about that. He said, you know, if. We pass the plan that we advocate, it means. You know, something like, I think he said, you know, in the, in the low four figure, I think, I think he’s saying between 12 to $1,400 per household, and the houses would be much less than that.

[00:32:40] Jim Henson: It’s like seven, I think 700 bucks or in that, in that range. In that, you know, so he was very clear about that and that, and look, I’m not gonna, I, I, I wouldn’t quibble with your use of populist in this. I was kind of thinking about it. I mean, you know, in the sense that he is trying to project something that is tried and true in Texas political culture by saying, look, I’m a guy who is here.

[00:33:02] Jim Henson: I am looking out for the, for the average person. That’s the nub of that appeal. And I think that, You know, I’m here to like really help the people that need it. The average person, not these other kind of elitist guys that, you know, for whatever reason the governor in the house seemed to want to help, you know, and he, and he was very direct about that.

[00:33:23] Jim Henson: Well,

[00:33:23] Josh Blank: even his choice of example, saying, you know, like imagine if you had a $250,000 house. Well, I’m gonna tell you 80% or more of Texas’ population lives in or around one of the urban centers in this state. And most of them cannot touch a property for $250,000. Yeah. So I mean, like, you’re not, I mean, you’re not, like, if you just think about who are you talking to, what does this look like?

[00:33:41] Josh Blank: Right. How is

[00:33:42] Jim Henson: this gonna go over? So, you know, um, you know, I, I, I don’t want to beat this to death, but I mean, I think if we look at, you know, so in addition to this kind of pressing the advantage on the politics of a broader. You know, kind of more populous seeming approach and characterizing his approach as that.

[00:34:02] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, I mean, I, I, you know, one more beat in terms of, you know, the conflict, this open conflict between lieutenant Governor and the governor. Um, Uh, I think people were struck by, you know, how direct the governor is, the lieutenant governor was, even as he kind of popped back and forth and, you know, and this is a, this has been the pattern with them, but it’s usually been more muted.

[00:34:31] Jim Henson: But this was very direct, you know, kind of, you know, I mean, you know, in taking notes and looking at that speech, I mean the, you know, things were the, the Lieutenant Governor was kind of saying like, look, I don’t blame the governor for this. He might not even know what’s in the document. He kind of waves the the plan around.

[00:34:47] Jim Henson: Yeah. Or he’s might the misled, he’s listening to outside people or you know, either inside pizza or outside people that are probably deceiving him. So like the implication there is like, you know, the governor doesn’t really. Know what, what’s going on here? Yeah. You know, he’s just, and, and to your point about the populism, I mean, I hadn’t really thought about it in this way, but you know, we’re down here like looking out for the people, governor’s just up there, right?

[00:35:11] Jim Henson: Doing whatever he is doing, listening to these people that are giving him bad advice, and then the delivery is like, let’s have a little Lincoln Douglas style

[00:35:20] Josh Blank: debate. I’m not trying to have a fight. Yeah, but I, but I will debate you next Monday, Tuesday. Yeah.

[00:35:24] Jim Henson: It’s not a fight, it’s a debate. Next week I’ll be here.

[00:35:27] Jim Henson: Yeah. You know, and, and, and with the little Lincoln Douglas thing and, you know, uh, yeah. You know, I think I have a pretty good idea of who the lieutenant Governor thinks is Lincoln and who he thinks is Douglas in that debate. Um, and for those of you that don’t, you know, aren’t familiar with Link Douglas debate, maybe we’ll put a link on that too.

[00:35:46] Jim Henson: But, um, so, you know, I mean, the closeout we’ve been going on for a while, you know, a couple of big. S picture considerations, the close on that we will almost certainly be coming back to in future weeks. I mean, look, I, you know, you mentioned governance earlier, and I think that is a, a, a really major point here.

[00:36:05] Jim Henson: Um, you know, we were talking beforehand, it’s a sign, uh, that you are having difficulty governing that you as a party mm-hmm. That owns Texas government lock, stock, and barrel. Mm-hmm. Can’t manage to pass the thing that you most prominently promised to everybody in the previous campaign cycle. Yeah. And that is property tax reaction.

[00:36:34] Jim Henson: And in the lead up to the session, there was nothing. Yeah. In the campaign, in the victory speeches, in the prepping for the session, uh, you know, the only other thing that competed with property taxes was the electric grid. Yeah. Right. And they got something on that done. There’s a whole other storyline that happened this week that we’re gonna have to come back to that the, that Peter Lake resigned as two.

[00:36:59] Jim Henson: Yeah. Yeah. That’s a big, that’s a, that’s a big story on that would take another, at least half hour. And, and I think people are still trying to figure out the ins and outs of that. So, you know, I mean, They’ve gotta, you know, we’ve been saying for months, if there’s one thing they’re gonna do, other than the thing they have to do the budget, they’re gonna do property taxes.

[00:37:17] Jim Henson: And here we are. With, you know, the news, you know, oddly enough there’s some, there’s other competing news in Texas politics right now, particularly with the impeachment in, in the impending trial, the Attorney General. But this is a big, it’s, you know, it’s a big sign of of failure so far. Yeah, and I mean, I don’t think there’s any other way you can look at it.

[00:37:39] Josh Blank: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and I think the reality is, is that the, uh, the impeachment of, of the Attorney General, you know, and look, I I, we always, you know, just to take a step back, you know, we sit here and we do this podcast. This podcast is very much, you know, the expectation is the people who are listening to this are already pretty interested in this kind of stuff.

[00:37:54] Josh Blank: Yeah. So this isn’t where you come for your first read, if you will, your first dose. Yeah. You know? Yes. Should be a little bit, should be a little bit more

[00:38:00] Jim Henson: called second reading

[00:38:01] Josh Blank: for a reason. Yes. But, you know, so you have to take a step back and think, you know, what, what are people. Where are people picking up right now?

[00:38:09] Josh Blank: And it’s interesting because if you just sort of take, you know, if you think about it, we know from our polling that you know, fewer than one in five voters, probably closer to one in 10, are paying a lot of attention to the legislature even at the end of the session. But the session comes to an end and every newspaper is covered with, you know, Texas House and Impeaches Attorney General.

[00:38:26] Josh Blank: Right. And again, and, and I think, you know, even people who are just mildly in passingly familiar politics, like, boy, you know, isn’t the state run by Republicans? Isn’t the attorney Trump? Like, he must have done something pretty bad. Yeah. Right. And then you go and you say, oh, you know, they’re going, and they’re also going into a special session immediately because they couldn’t agree on property tax cuts, which, and you say, really, Republicans can’t agree on property tax codes.

[00:38:48] Josh Blank: What does that mean again? Say who? Nobody cares about the mechanism. Nobody understands the mechanisms. Right. And then, You chase that with this open conflict, which, you know, you say what you want about the media. People say, oh, the media is biased. Yes, the media is biased, but you know what they’re biased towards, they’re biased towards this kind of conflict.

[00:39:04] Josh Blank: Right? And so you look at that and you look at those three things, and I mean, and I sort of, I hinted at this in a, and we were talking earlier, we don’t have to go into it and I don’t want to, but like, and there’s an overall backdrop to this, which is, you know, We almost defaulted on the debts nationally.

[00:39:18] Josh Blank: Right. You know, and the sort of the, the, the brinksmanship between the Republican controlled House of Representatives and the President really getting up to the, you know, if you’re just sort of a voter kinda looking around, like right now, you might be sort of wondering wtf Yeah. You know? Right. Like, you know, what is going on here because this doesn’t, you know, this is not gonna make sense when somebody doesn’t make sense like this.

[00:39:37] Josh Blank: It draws in people to like a little bit more than maybe they might have been drawn in. Just because of the scandal, because of the dysfunction, and you know, you, what you worry about. I think if you are, you know, in the governing class and if you’re part of the majority party right now is, you know, are you, you know, I mean, I don’t wanna overstate it, but, you know, does it make you look incompetent?

[00:39:57] Jim Henson: Yeah, I mean, I, you know, I think, you know, we, as part of this conversation beforehand, we were talking about this, you know, I mean, we’ve been talking for years and for good reason about. The internal tensions inside the Republican party, whether they’re thinking of them as, you know, honest the goodness cleavages or you know, whatever.

[00:40:15] Jim Henson: And I think we talked about Elijah as being kind of a fractal thing almost at this point. But I think one of the things that’s interesting, and we’ll come back to this, is that, you know, that national, you know, there’s this whole national sort of discussion over what happened with the death ceiling and now, and I think most people are probably not following the follow up, which is now, you know, some of the, the.

[00:40:38] Jim Henson: The dissidents, you know, that have been making Speaker McCarthy at the national level’s life miserable, are now kind of, you know, doing a little bit of sort of display behavior to make sure everybody notices that they can still be an issue, be a problem, even though they, you know, had to go along with the death ceiling thing.

[00:40:56] Jim Henson: Um, and then all of this kind of fighting going on over both policy and personal stuff in corruption in Texas. There’s an interesting contrast there between. You know, a two-party competitive environment. Mm-hmm. And what’s going on at the national level and the fact that because the parties were more, you know, were competitive with each other.

[00:41:15] Jim Henson: There was something of a, an agreement that got cut that involved Democrats and Republicans, you know, basically. Sitting there coming, you know, coming to some kind of agreement that, you know, pissed off the ex, you know, the more extreme wings of each party. But that got done. Where in Texas dynamic is very different because it’s such a non-competitive environment.

[00:41:36] Jim Henson: And all of this fighting that we’re seeing right now is really exclusively among Republicans because it’s, it’s such a one party dominant environment. And we’ll come back, I mean, We’ve talked about that in the past. We’ll come back to that and I think it’s gonna, it that’s gonna make manifest again. Yeah.

[00:41:53] Jim Henson: I mean in pretty significant ways going forward. But it does, you know, the governance problem, and I guess what I would say is that it means that the govern, you know, we’re seeing governance problems. I think it’s fair to say both the national and the state level. Yeah. But the dynamics of those governance problems are really very different.

[00:42:12] Josh Blank: Well, yeah, and it’s interesting. It’s my mind. Yeah. And I mean, and I would say, you know, and specifically to bring it back to Texas, the special session dynamic, really. Um, intensifies it, right? I mean, because the governor is yeah, determining the agenda. Democrats really have nothing to play for here, right?

[00:42:28] Josh Blank: So they have no re I mean, so for example, you know, when you’re talking about like the, the vote over the debt ceiling in the house, I mean there’s this whole sort of, you know, narrative of this where, you know, essentially there are a bunch of Republicans are like, okay, you know, I can give you my vote if you need it, but I need to see how many Democrats.

[00:42:41] Josh Blank: You guys get so that like, you know, we can see how many people we can release and vote against it and all this business. Right. You know, the way that that’s working in Texas is, is solely within the Republican party. I mean, I think the way that Abbott has set up the special session calls and his, his, his signaling around it is, you know, Lieutenant Governor came out and said, here’s a list of, you know, whatever, 12, 15 things that we should still do.

[00:42:59] Josh Blank: Instead of the governor saying no, the governor said, okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. Yeah. I’m gonna do this real simple like, and I’m gonna call multiple special sessions, which could literally just be two, this one and the one for vouchers. But who knows? I’m gonna call multiple special sessions. I think that was the thinking at the time.

[00:43:17] Josh Blank: Yeah. Yeah, I’m, well, I mean, the point is I’m saying he could call multiple special sessions and still completely follow through on what he planned because of the property text. He could say, I’m gonna call multiple specials and I’m gonna dole out the issues that. That I, that I want you to deal with one at a time so you guys can, can deal with it.

[00:43:29] Josh Blank: And we talked about how this sort of was a little bit patronizing, you know, a little bit. Yeah. But here’s the thing too. But from a negotiating standpoint, if he still needs, if he’s still negotiating with Republicans to come along, the idea is he needs to hold out, you know, hope for them that some of those other issues might still get called on a special session.

[00:43:43] Josh Blank: If he said, no, this is all gone, then they have nothing to play for. But that shows like the fraught of the dynamics in some ways, and that you’ve got on the one hand, Democrats with nothing to play for in the, at the state level in this process. And on the other hand, you have Republicans, you know, again, in the legislative process at different levels, whether you’re in the house or in the Senate, you know, in some ways.

[00:44:02] Josh Blank: I mean, not, you know, I don’t know how else to say this, but, but negotiating with, with a partner in Abbott who has not necessarily demonstrated himself to be super reliable. Yeah. And so there’s also that dynamic going on here, right. In terms of, you know, is the, is the governor going to call another special session on the issues that I care about that we haven’t addressed?

[00:44:20] Josh Blank: Right.

[00:44:20] Jim Henson: Well, and that, and that was one of the things, it was a very interesting swing in the 24 hours between the calling of the special session. And the house passing those two priorities. Mm-hmm. Right. Which is, you know, the mood was very much initially the governor saying, aye, you know, legislature, you know, they don’t have their act together.

[00:44:36] Jim Henson: Yeah. Next thing you know, again, it’s, and we talked about this last week, the whole unstable triangle thing. Next thing you know, the governor and the speaker of the house are both like, yeah, we’re on the same

[00:44:43] Josh Blank: page. Yeah. And you know what, if he calls him back for a voucher, uh, bill, you know, voucher bill back, and you know, then it’s gonna switch.

[00:44:49] Josh Blank: It’s gonna switch. Right. You know, but, but, but the whole point

[00:44:51] Jim Henson: here is, and, and, and to be fair, Democrats will also play more of a role in that, in

[00:44:55] Josh Blank: that. Yes, that’s right. But how much of a role?

[00:44:59] Jim Henson: Well, I mean, you know, depending on what that looks like. Yeah. You know, I mean, there were,

[00:45:05] Josh Blank: oh, there, yeah. They’ll play a role in that front.

[00:45:06] Josh Blank: Yeah. Because there were more

[00:45:07] Jim Henson: democratic votes on, you know.

[00:45:08] Josh Blank: Yeah, yeah. No, and being the, and being the, uh, and being the main part of the house’s office. Yeah. I

[00:45:13] Jim Henson: mean, they’ll be a bigger part of the story at that point, but nonetheless, the, the origin of that is still the fact that, you know, Republicans are governing.

[00:45:23] Jim Henson: Mm-hmm. And, you know, they have a lot of agenda management, you know, ability here, and we should, you know, uh, make sure we add that. Of course, at this moment, this is the moment where, you know, the governor has, you know, a lot more initiative in the process than he did in the middle of the session. That’s by design.

[00:45:43] Jim Henson: And

[00:45:43] Josh Blank: that’s also why I think, you know, people who are wondering, well, why doesn’t the Senate just gavel out and just, you know, kick off, basically force the governor to another special session to restart the process. And the reason I’d say is, Because right now this is about politics. Right. And, and,

[00:45:56] Jim Henson: and we should say, and, and you know, I mean the, and Lieutenant Governor’s been very straightforward about that.

[00:46:01] Jim Henson: Yeah. Be, I mean, you, at the press conference yesterday in their messaging, we’re not going anywhere. We’re gonna keep working. And they’re continuing to work on things that are not on the call. Yeah. So that they can demonstrate publicly. Particularly to Republican audiences. We are finishing, we are, we are continuing the work and implicitly the work that the house didn’t do because they’re bad republicans when we were in the regular

[00:46:25] Josh Blank: session.

[00:46:26] Josh Blank: So I love, I love this dynamic at the end of session and also special sessions in some ways cuz it’s really interesting where you get to this point where you say, okay. Here’s this bucket of stuff that our partisans may or may, you know, part our partisans or some, you know, important, you know, issue groups within our p, within our coalition really wanted.

[00:46:41] Josh Blank: Yeah. And then you get this sort of game where it’s like, okay, who can take credit for dealing with some of these while casting blame on everybody else? Because we didn’t do these other things and this has happened multiple times. Yeah. I mean you watched, you know, session after session. I mean, what’s interesting about it, I think, and you know, we could probably just do a podcast just on this dynamic or write a piece about it, cause it’s interesting to me at least, is, you know, you can watch the governor, Lieutenant Governor again who’ve started together, come along together.

[00:47:05] Josh Blank: You can see them over time, adjusting their strategies. Yeah. You know, each time. And the governor this time is a different strategy. He took last time we talked about this last week, it’s a different strategy he took last time. But the, but the outcome and the goal is the same in all cases. In all cases.

[00:47:17] Josh Blank: You know, the house wants to pass a bill and leave and say, Hey, we passed the bill. The senate’s holding it up. The senate’s now going in, debating a bunch of stuff that’s not on the session call. While the house isn’t here and therefore can’t even be, could not become law in any way, right? At least in this session.

[00:47:31] Josh Blank: And basically they can say, Hey, you know, we passed all this stuff in the special session, but the house didn’t show up. And in the end, the governor, whatever they pass, is gonna say, you can thank me for this and everything. They didn’t do well. On them. On

[00:47:42] Jim Henson: them, right. Yeah. I mean, I think the, you know, the shifting of all this is, is always fascinating and, you know, to the credit, to the players, you know, hard, you know, hard to negotiate because there’s a lot of fluidity in this.

[00:47:55] Jim Henson: So we will see more in that. And I, you know, the, uh, The Senate was in today, this morning as we’re recording this on Wednesday. Um, sort of, and I, you know, I wasn’t able to watch all of it as I was prepping for this and in and out doing things, but there’s a strange sense of business as usual, although, you know, I may, I may hear about something that happened that wasn’t quite that, but it like, yeah, we’re just here passing stuff, so, yeah.

[00:48:20] Jim Henson: Okay. With that, thanks to Josh for being here. Thanks to our excellent production team in the dev studio in the College of Liberal Arts at UT Austin. Uh, if you’re listening to this on one of the podcasting platforms, you’ll find more supplemental material in. On the blog section that’s under the, the kind of polling division at Texas politics dot tex edu.

[00:48:43] Jim Henson: We’ve referred to links. I’ll try to remember all the things I promised and make sure they’re in there. Uh, thanks for listening and we’ll be back soon with another second reading podcast.

[00:48:58] Outro: The second reading podcast is a production of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas at Austin.