Capitol Chronicle

It's a mordant commentary on the condition of Texas government this year that Lt. Gov. David "Just a Lone Cowpoke" Dewhurst has been widely applauded as a rational, moderating force within a leadership cadre gleefully intent on gutting government services. The perception is very relative, of course; when Dewhurst suggested -- in defiance of Gov. Perry, Comptroller Strayhorn, and House Appropriations Chair Talmadge Heflin -- that the state might consider spending some of the state's $1 billion "rainy-day fund" to salvage some programs in a $10 billion deficit year, the proposal was received as verging on the Solomonic.

Last week Dewhurst floated a two-cent increase in the state sales tax for education, as a means of reducing local property taxes and eliminating "Robin Hood" in the bargain. The details are more than a little sketchy -- the suburban Our-Kids-Deserve-More lobby still hasn't quite yet figured out how they're going to throw the equity baby out with the recapture bath water. But Dewhurst got a few headlines, if only because he mentioned the T-word without immediately being struck by GOP heat lightning.

In a similar vein, progressives and House Democrats are grimly hoping that Dewhurst's predecessor, Sen. Bill Ratliff, R-Mt. Pleasant, and his State Affairs Committee will somehow manage to make the sack of bitter tort-reform lemons that is HB 4 into something approaching civil-justice lemonade. Ratliff has already earned kudos for simply treating the bill and the witnesses evenhandedly -- something HB 4's author, House Civil Practices Chair Joe Nixon, R-Houston, couldn't seem to manage, in a pattern unhappily characteristic of House committee style under Speaker Tom Craddick. Ratliff has also publicly raised his eyebrows at both the bill's hard caps on non-economic damages and its lopsided approach to refused settlement offers (plaintiff punished, defendant undisturbed).

Led by Ratliff, the Senate may indeed design a tort-reform bill it can take to conference without curtsying to the lobby, although what rough beast will then slouch out again remains too grim to contemplate.

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Can't Always Get What You Want

Of course, both Ratliff and Dewhurst work in a body that by rule still requires cooperation -- if they can't get two-thirds of the senators, which means at least a few Democrats, to agree to at least discuss a bill, it never sees the light of day. One wonders what the Senate will look like next session should the lobby succeed in buying a few more senators.

You don't have to look far. The House this week has seemed something like an endless replay of a bar fight between a brace of Woody Allens and an army of Terminators. House Democrats offer amendment after amendment to move money from one part of the woefully underfunded budget to another -- from the governor's office administration, say, to child immunizations, or from the Historical Commission to drug treatment -- and after a kabukilike, timed exchange between a handful of Democrats and one or two Republicans from Appropriations, the time expires via a GOP point-of-order and the amendment is unceremoniously tabled with 85 to 95 votes.

On Monday, a daylong debate over HB 7 -- the emergency appropriations bill covering just this year's deficit -- was abruptly truncated by Houston Democrat Ron Wilson's procedural motion to foreclose all amendments not already on the Speaker's desk. That anti-debate vote also passed by rote, unnecessarily assisted by other Craddick-crats who, like Wilson, have hitched their personal wagons to the rising GOP stars. HB 7 was approved 113-33, and the same choreography shifted to HB 1, the 2004-2005 budget laid out by Chairman Heflin, with identical results: a handful of Democrats providing political and moral witness to the budget's skewed priorities -- what Gov. Perry calls the difference between "wants" and "needs" -- and the Republicans waiting, with increasing impatience, for the bell to sound and the dance to end, by 95-50 or so.

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It Never Rains but It Pours

The most telling exchange occurred late Monday night, when Waco's Jim Dunnam, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, tried to get Heflin simply to acknowledge that the House budget as written includes some $5 billion or $6 billion that does not exist and that neither the House nor the Senate is prepared to raise except by prestidigitation. Heflin repeatedly dodged the inquiry, saying only that some "pending bills" would raise additional money, although the only specific revenue measure he could point to is one to end the "Delaware sub" loophole for corporations -- a necessary tax reform that will raise all of $400 million.

Dunnam continued to press the issue, and with increasing anger Heflin said the only reason the proposed budget is so large is that "people like you" want to spend more money than the state has available, but that after this session's Republican "retooling of government" the state will be able to add funds that, as of this moment, are nowhere to be found. Shortly thereafter Heflin stormed off the front mike, and Dunnam's question will remain hanging in the air for at least another month.

It's much worse than that, actually. Even the governor has agreed that it's drizzling -- at least enough for him to sequester (and obediently receive) corporate-welfare "Enterprise Funds" from the rainy-day kitty just in case another destitute Toyota should come begging. Comptroller "Everybody Knows It Never Rains in Texas" Strayhorn has begun hinting that sales-tax revenues continue to slide, with no relief in sight. Privately, lawmakers are saying that the official deficit is likely to become $2 billion to $3 billion more than $9.9 billion before the session ends, at which point the leadership will suddenly discover that "we just don't have the money" to fulfill the phantom budget they are now pretending to write.

At that point, it will take a good deal more than a politically savvy Dewhurst or a gentlemanly Ratliff to salvage what is left of this session's miserly, shortsighted exercise in well-tailored class warfare. The state's budget is intentionally being "balanced" on the backs of ordinary working people who pay a much higher percentage of their incomes in taxes than they receive in public services -- and who are now being told by the likes of Talmadge Heflin, Rick Perry, Carole Strayhorn, Tom Craddick, and Arlene Wohlgemuth that they need to "tighten their belts."