How Texas was pushed into crisis
Winter storm laid bare festering problems
Two days before the storm began, Houston’s chief elected official warned her constituents to prepare as they would for a major hurricane. Many took heed: Texans who could stocked up on food and water, while nonprofits and government agencies set out to help those who couldn’t.
But few foresaw the fiasco that was to come.
As temperatures plunged and snow and ice whipped the state, much of the Texas power grid collapsed, followed by its water systems. A prideful state, long suspicious of regulation and outside help, was left to seek aid from other states and humanitarian groups as many of its 29 million people grasped for survival.
The state’s Republican leadership was blamed for ignoring warnings that a severe winter could wreak the havoc that it did, and for not providing local officials with enough information to protect residents. A lack of regulations to protect critical infrastructure and failure by officials to take recommended steps to winterize equipment left the nation’s largest energy-producing state unprepared for last week’s weather emergency.
A week after she warned her county’s nearly 5 million residents about the impending storm, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo was sleeping on an air mattress at the county’s emergency operations center. Her home had been without power for three nights.
“It’s worth asking the question: Who set up this system and who perpetuated it knowing that the right regulation was not in place?” Hidalgo said.
Around 2 a.m. Monday, the full measure of the crisis Texas faced began to be apparent.
Cold and ice had set in the day before, leading to spreading power outages across the state. But standing in the
emergency operations center early Monday, Hidalgo and others learned that their local energy provider, Centerpoint Energy, would not be able to “roll” outages between homes as they had been told earlier.
Instead of short intervals of heat, enough to keep their homes safe, residents would have to go without for days on end.
Power outages spiraled through the day Monday, ultimately cutting off more than 4 million people. Grocery stores shut down and hotel rates skyrocketed.
Things got worse Tuesday. Thousands of people sought refuge from their freezing homes in warming shelters. Others sat in their cars; dozens were hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning. A woman and her daughter died after running their car inside a garage.
By Wednesday, some started to get their power back, but a new shortage emerged – drinkable water.
Frozen pipes burst across the state. And the water that did come out of taps was often undrinkable due to dangerously low water pressure levels. At one point, an estimated 13 million people were under a boil-water order, nearly half of Texas’ population.
More than 35 people in Texas have been confirmed dead. That number was expected to rise as roads cleared and relatives and first responders could check on missing loved ones.
Mark Henry, Galveston County’s judge, asked the state early in the week to send a refrigerated truck requested by the local medical examiner, who expected an influx of bodies.
“If they had been honest with us from the beginning, we would have ordered evacuations. But they didn’t tell us that,” he said.
Basically, the state is an island in the U.S. electrical system.
There is one large grid covering the eastern half of the country, another for the West, with Texas wedged between them.
The Texas grid isn’t walled off, but there are only a few interconnections with the Eastern U.S. grid and Mexico. In the past, utility executives argued the Texas grid would be less reliable and more vulnerable to blackouts if it were fully connected – which would make it easier for other states to tap Texas during their own shortages.
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas was created in 1970; it became a more powerful broker over electricity flows after deregulation in this century. In the wake of the storm, it has taken most of the blame from Texas politicians and the public.
In 2011, millions of Texans lost power during the Super Bowl, which was played in a Dallas suburb. Two agencies, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, conducted a study on how Texas could “winterize” its energy infrastructure. At the highest end, winterizing 50,000 gas wells would cost an estimated $1.75 billion, the study found.
But there was no broad move to winterize equipment. Since then, bills requiring energy producers to hold more power in reserve or ordering a study of how to better prepare for winter failed in the Republican-controlled Texas House.
Texas lawmakers deregulated the energy market in 2002. Supporters say this lowered energy prices statewide, but critics say it gave producers leeway to avoid improvements that might have prevented events like this week’s catastrophe.
Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has promised multiple investigations of this storm and made ERCOT an “emergency” item for the Legislature, which is currently in its biennial session.
“I think there is going to have to be a serious inquiry into why it was, what were the factors that led the grid not to be able to meet the energy needs of Texas,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.
Cruz spoke Thursday evening in the yard of his home in Houston’s wealthiest neighborhood, River Oaks. He had cut short a trip to Cancun, Mexico, after images circulated of him waiting at a Houston airport for his flight to the resort town.
At week’s end, as the cold weather began to loosen its grip, the power grid came back online for most Texans. But burst pipes had flooded thousands of homes. Earlier in the week, Abbott had asked plumbers from other states to come to Texas and help.
But fixing pipes is one thing. Fixing a whole state is another.
WASHINGTON – After an attack at the U.S. Capitol and a historic impeachment trial, Congress is back to legislating.
Lawmakers’ primary focus this week will be President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, which Democrats are eager to pass even without Republican help. The bill likely will face some hurdles, and Democrats will put their slim majorities in both chambers to the test for the first time.
But Congress is up against a clear deadline. In a few weeks, aid for millions of people still struggling through the COVID-19 pandemic will run dry.
So where does the latest COVID-19 relief bill go from here?
When could bill pass?
The stimulus package is expected to pass the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, but it faces several key hurdles. Over the next week, it must clear several key panels in the House before it can pass the full House with a simple majority vote.
The bill is up for consideration in the House Budget Committee on Monday afternoon, and the House Rules Committee takes it up later in the week. Neither panel is expected to substantially alter the bill.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-MD., has told lawmakers to expect the House to vote on it later in the week.
If the bill passes the House, it would then go to the Senate, where it would face a more complicated process. The chamber could amend the bill, which would send it back to the House for another vote.
Democrats aim to pass the package by mid-march, when a federal boost to unemployment benefits expires.
What’s in the relief bill?
The House Budget Committee released
a 591-page draft of the legislation Friday. The bill contains provisions affecting a wide variety of government functions. Here is some of what the legislation includes:
h $1,400 checks for Americans earning $75,000 or less, or $2,800 for couples earning $150,000 or less, plus $1,400 per dependent.
h Renewal of the Paycheck Protection Program for small-business loans.
h Enhanced food aid benefits for families.
h Funding for schools to reopen.
h Restaurant relief.
h Funding for transit and airports.
h An extension of a $400-a-week boost to federal unemployment benefits through the end of August.
h An expansion of the child tax credit, including an increase to $3,600 per child and a shift to it being delivered as a monthly payment.
h Expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit.
h Funding for vaccine distribution.
h Expansion of subsidies under the Affordable Care Act for health insurance.
h Expansion of health insurance for the unemployed through COBRA health insurance law subsidies.
h An increase in the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025.
What is budget reconciliation?
The Senate is tied 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, and Vice President Kamala Harris is available to break ties. But Democrats do not have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, meaning they would need more than 60 votes to thwart any Republican effort to block the legislation.
Instead, Democrats are using a process called budget reconciliation that allows them to skip major procedural roadblocks.
Reconciliation allows Democrats to pass the legislation with a simple majority. But the process is subject to certain rules that could make it more difficult to include some Democratic priorities, such as a $15 minimum wage.
Both parties have used budget reconciliation before. Republicans tried to use it to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017, but it failed when three Republican senators voted with all Democrats to reject the repeal.
Republicans later succeeded, however, in passing major tax code reform through reconciliation.
What are the major hurdles and disagreements?
Republican senators oppose many of the provisions in the legislation, such as the billions in aid for state and local governments. In this round of negotiations, as in the last round, Republicans have derided the aid as a bailout for Democratic-controlled localities mired in financial problems.
A group of Republican senators introduced a smaller proposal totaling about $618 billion, but Democrats forged ahead on their $1.9 trillion plan despite Republicans’ objections.
Intraparty disputes have emerged among Democrats over the inclusion of a federal minimum wage increase. Moderate Democrats such as Sens. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Joe Manchin of West Virginia have said they oppose including the $15 minimum wage in the package.
Under a provision known as the Byrd Rule, a senator can raise objections to “extraneous” provisions in legislation being passed under reconciliation, and if the objection is ruled in order, then the provision will be stripped from the bill. Provisions are considered “extraneous” if they do not have a substantial effect on the federal budget.
Proponents of the minimum wage increase such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, IVT., have argued that the wage increase could survive scrutiny under the Byrd Rule. He pointed to a recent study by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that found an increase in the federal minimum wage would increase the budget deficit by driving up the price for goods and services used by the federal government. But if the provision remains in the final Senate legislation, it is unclear if Democrats like Sinema and Manchin would support it, leaving its future in jeopardy.