We just saw left meet right yesterday in the Texas House. Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner of Houston struck down the House’s water funding bill last night on a technicality. Along with Turner’s fellow Democrats, tea party Republicans loved that move because they did not want to vote to lift the state’s spending cap, which HB 11 would have led to if passed.
All is not lost. Republican House Speaker Joe Straus says he is looking for a way to bring back up HB 11 by GOP Rep. Allan Ritter.
But the fight over HB 11 was a strange bedfellow moment. And it shows how the GOP leadership in Austin can get squeezed.
Limited government Republicans like Straus have made it clear that their party must show they can take care of the core functions of government, which includes making sure Texans have enough water. But that is sometimes easier said than done.
Ritter’s HB 11 would have authorized the use of $2 billion from the rainy day fund to finance Texas water projects. The need for those projects is indisputable, especially when you consider our drought-plagued state. But Democrats have wanted to include education spending in any move to use the rainy day fund. As a result, they opposed Ritter’s sensible legislation.
Ritter and other top Republicans in charge of the House knew that was coming. So, they offered an amendment that said, in effect, the House would go into general revenues to finance the water plan if HB 11 failed.
Naturally, Democrats didn’t like that idea because a raid on general revenues would mean less money for social and educational initiatives they favor. (In truth, I’m sure some Republicans didn’t like the idea of a raid on GR, either. They could see less money coming there way for their priorities.)
In response, Rep. Turner found a way to kill the raid-on-GR amendment on a parliamentary technicality. As a result, HB 11 came tumbling down.
That’s the Democratic part of the squeeze play. Now, here’s the tea party element:
If HB 11 had passed, and use of the rainy day fund for water projects had been approved, lawmakers would have had to vote to lift the constitutional limit on how much legislators can spend every two years. Tea partiers would have loathed to increase that limit.
Perhaps some of them are okay with using the rainy day fund for water projects, but tea party legislators sure didn’t want to go home and say they lifted the spending cap. Not when outside groups would accuse them of being little Hubert Humphreys. That’s why you heard some tea partiers taking to the mike yesterday to question the need for HB 11.
What does this all mean? Governing from the center-right perspective, where you believe that government must meet needs but also be restrained, is really difficult.
Leaders like Ritter and Straus rightly started this session saying that legislators must find a way to fund Texas’ water plan. To their credit, so did Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.
Now, they must figure a way to get past this combination of left-meets-right. I think the best way is to include some education money in any use of rainy day funds. That could win enough Democratic votes to pass this bill.
But perhaps there are other ways to salvage this bill. And that must be the main goal, both for Texans and center/right Republicans. The state needs to take care of its water needs and mainstream Republicans need to show they can govern.