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The Blast - April 25, 2025 [1]
['The Texas Tribune']
Date: 2025-04
21 days for the House to pass legislation that originated in the House 38 days until sine die
HOUSE LEADERSHIP WANTS HARDLINERS AND DEMS TO PLAY NICE
There’s just three weeks left for the House to pass House bills, and the repeated tit for tat on the floor threatens to blow up the Legislature’s work, including on conservative priorities.
Today, Republicans from the caucus’ right flank blocked nearly every Democratic-filed measure on the local and consent calendar, a list of uncontroversial bills that the House can roll through quickly. In response, Democrats blocked every remaining Republican-filed measure on that list.
The hardliners’ volley was in retaliation against the majority of Democrats who, on Tuesday, blocked a constitutional amendment (via a House joint resolution, or HJR) to create a homestead exemption for adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities.
“Today was a show of force of us saying, hey, listen, we are not going to sit idly by as you’re refusing to vote on HJRs,” Rep. Nate Schatzline, R-Fort Worth, told The Blast.
Some in House leadership contend that the band of conservative Republicans is merely obstructionist and don’t want the current Legislature to get anything done.
Democrats began the blockade weeks ago to exact concessions from Republicans on multiple policy points. However, Republicans all but unified last week to block a bipartisan proposal to put the state’s upcoming voucher program before voters. That made it clear, in the eyes of the caucus, that the speaker answers more to the governor and the lieutenant governor than to House members. That’s triggered a more aggressive approach from the Democratic caucus. More on the Big Three’s relationship later.
Herein lies the problem for Republicans:
House leadership wants to see the Texas GOP’s priorities passed, too, members tell The Blast. However, Republicans need Democratic support to pass the bail measure or anything else that requires 100 votes to pass the House. By repeatedly angering Democrats, they only drive them farther away.
By removing more than three dozen bills from the local and consent calendar, the spat between Democrats and hardline Republicans will bog down the Calendars Committee and the regular House calendar, stealing from the short amount of time the House has left in session.
House leadership is trying to tell the hardliners that, in the end, the tit for tat could block the chamber from getting to any other priorities. So far, it hasn’t gotten the hardliners to back down.
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