Over 100 bills killed by tea party revolt
GOP Freedom Caucus, claiming House slights, erases consent agenda.
In what’s been dubbed the “Mother’s Day Massacre,” a small group of tea party-aligned Republicans in the Texas House this week used parliamentary maneuvers to defeat more than 120 bills in retaliation for what they consider a pattern of unfair treatment by the House leadership.
The victims of their obstruction, however, weren’t the top allies of House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, who had none of his priorities defeated, but rank-andfile members who saw scores of their proposals effectively killed as the self-styled Freedom Caucus gummed up the legislative process while key legislative deadlines approached.
The final blow came Friday, when the group successfully petitioned to remove all 121 bills from Friday’s Local and Consent Calendar, the agenda for bills not considered controversial that are approved without significant debate.
Under the House rules, five members can request that a bill be removed from that calendar, requiring it to be debated and adopted like a regular bill. But because Thursday was the deadline for the House to approve regular bills, pulling those measures from the agenda Friday spelled all but certain death for many of the proposals. (They can be revived if the Senate approves an identical measure or if they’re tacked onto a germane piece of legislation from the Senate.)
Among the proposals cast aside Friday:
House Bill 2974 by Rep. Tony Dale, R-Cedar Park, to create a new criminal offense targeting sexual predators who target children online.
HB 2159 by Rep. Helen Giddings, D-DeSoto, to address “school lunch shaming” of low-income students who run out of money on their prepaid meal card by creating a two-week grace period for repayment.
HB 2403 by Rep. Shawn Thierry, D-Houston, to study the high maternal mortality rate among African-American women in Texas.
HB 3775 by Rep. Terry Wilson, R-Marble Falls, to fund a grant program to increase early literacy.
Freedom Caucus members announced Thursday night they would defeat Friday’s entire agenda after learning that some bills they had prioritized were left off.
“This is another shot, another direct shot, at the conservative members of this House,” Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano, told reporters.
Throughout the legislative session, members of the caucus have been pulling bills from the expedited agenda, frustrating their colleagues in both parties and slowing the work of the House. Leach, however, said that Freedom Caucus members target bills for policy reasons, but when the House leadership fails to advance the Freedom Caucus’ legislation, it is due to politics.
“For the Freedom Caucus and for the conservative members of the House, it’s always been about policy, 100 percent of the time,” he said. “What’s happened to us has been personal retribution.”
Who’s ‘conservative’?
High-ranking Republican Rep. Dennis Bonnen, often enlisted to broker agreements between the leadership and the right wing of the party, objected to the caucus’ characterization of the House leadership as not being conservative enough, citing high-profile bills that have already passed.
“So ‘sanctuary cities’ is not a conservative issue for them? A balanced budget with $1 billion less than the current budget is not a conservative issue for them?” Bonnen said in an interview.
Still, Bonnen said, the caucus had the right to hold up Friday’s agenda.
“They have the right within the rules to use the rules however they think it will give them an advantage,” said Bonnen, chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who hails from the southeast Texas city of Angleton.
House Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, also objected to the caucus calling the House leadership insufficiently conservative — “For them to mischaracterize something is not unusual” — and said the caucus had the right to kill the bills on the consent agenda.
“As long as they’re following the rules, they can do what they need to do,” he said.
A tearful plea
The upending of Friday’s agenda proved to be the quiet denouement to an emotional 10-hour meeting on Thursday, the last day for House-originated bills on the regular agenda to be passed by the chamber, in which lawmakers cried, shouted and scoffed at each other on the floor as the midnight deadline approached.
The House passed only 37 of the 295 bills on the agenda, after getting bogged down by an hourslong afternoon debate on an abortion-related bill and then being held up by overt obstruction in the evening by the Freedom Caucus members, who slowed progress on the floor by proposing numerous amendments, debating uncontroversial measures at length and frequently posing parliamentary inquiries.
At one point, Rep. Jonathan Stickland, a Bedford Republican who is the most prominent member of the caucus, had his microphone turned off after posing a series of repetitive inquiries about the rules for Friday’s agenda. He then walked to the center of the House floor, shouting for his questions to be recognized.
The logjam broke only once, when Rep. Drew Springer tearfully implored his colleagues to move forward so the House could vote on a bill expanding access to stem cell treatment that he believed could help his wife, who uses a wheelchair.
“It does some remarkable things,” Springer, a Muenster Republican, said of adult stem cell treatments. “It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk.”
After the speech, the Freedom Caucus briefly paused their delaying tactics, allowing HB 810 by Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, to pass. The bill was named “Charlie’s Law” after former Rep. Charlie Howard, who died recently after a yearslong battle with cancer.
Stickland, however, soon resumed his stalling tactics until time ran out and Straus cut him off, saying, “It’s midnight, Mr. Stickland.”