Budget priorities

The Texas Senate continues to waste time while a funding crisis looms.

The Texas legislative session is a five-month-long marathon of hearings, bills and debates. The deadline for filing bills passed on March 10, and now the steady jog of a long-distance runner is picking up as the finish line comes into sight. There’s only one thing waiting for our racing legislators when they finally break the tape on May 29 — the state budget.

Every other bill, from school finance reform to bathroom debates, takes second place to one true responsibility of each legislative session.

The duty of moving on the budget customarily switches back and forth between the two elected bodies. Last time it was the House’s responsibility, and this year the Senate is supposed to go first.

However, House Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, has said that his chamber will have a budget bill on the floor by the end of the month, whether the Senate is ready to go or not.

There’s a real concern that the Senate might miss the deadline. Instead of giving this constitutionally required bill top priority, the Senate has frittered the time away on issues that are almost guaranteed to end up in the House trash bin.

It is as if the Senate decided to tire itself out by running in circles before sprinting toward the finish.

A school vouchers bill and the recently passed bathroom bill are expected to land with a thud in the House. Meanwhile, Straus is sounding the alarm about a serious financial crisis that will take time to fix.

“Revenues are down. Expenses are up. In this budget situation, our approaches to it in the House and Senate are very different,” Straus said Monday on an Austinbased news show. “And it requires really a lot of attention that it has not received.”

Watching a jogger pace a steady 8-minute mile is admittedly less interesting than gawking at someone doing flip-flops in the middle of the track. The wide-ranging consequences for our state, however, will grab major headlines if the Legislature doesn’t do the boring business of fixing budget gaps.

Community colleges will have to cancel classes. State universities will see their budgets slashed. Retired teachers will face a major spike in their deductibles and monthly premiums if the Legislature doesn’t fill a $1 billion funding shortfall.

Unlike the 2011 budget cuts, there’s no national economic crisis and most Texans don’t feel a panic in their bones about our fiscal health. Years of delayed decisions and questionable tax cuts have simply burned a hole in the Texas budget that needs to be repaired. Relying only on budget cuts, as the Senate seems prepared to do, would be an unnecessary and unwise decision that could do serious and lasting damage to our educational institutions and economic competitiveness.

Before our elected officials feel free to debate their political wants, the Senate must address our financial needs.

So how is Dan Patrick spending his time? He aligned himself Wednesday with Steve Hotze in condemning Straus’ lack of action on the bathroom bill. Hotze, as Quorum Report described the longtime political advocate, “belongs to a group that thinks women can only work outside the home with their husband’s consent, thinks gay marriage will lead to ‘sodomy in kindergarten,’ and has suggested the Jewish Speaker (Straus) wants to outlaw Christianity.”

But like a well-trained runner, Straus keeps his eyes on the goal.

“They’re free to have their priorities,” the speaker said Monday about the Senate’s bathroom bill. “I know it is very, very important to the lieutenant governor. But having a balanced, responsible budget is our priority. And I really wish the budget would get as much attention as bathroom bills or other things over there.”

So do we.