Fiddling While Texas Burns
When the agenda was set at the Capitol, you weren't invited
By Michael King, Fri., March 28, 2003
Like his colleagues, Wilson lamented the personal tone coloring the debate -- and then denounced opponents of the bill, predominantly his fellow Democrats, who had refused earlier to withdraw their procedural objections ("points of order") to allow the bill's author Joe Nixon, R-Houston, and the House GOP leadership to continue ram-rodding the bill. Wilson, always an unpredictable Democrat, has become one of the leading Craddick-crats -- for whatever reasons hitching his wagon to Speaker Tom Craddick's leadership team and from day one of the session endorsing Craddick's extremely centralized revision and partisan management of the House rules.
But as Steve Wolens, D-Dallas, was quick to point out, since 1977 Wilson has been legendary for his own masterful use of parliamentary procedure and House rules to promote or derail legislation when he simply didn't have the votes to do so directly. Now that the patent-leather shoe is on the other foot, Wilson sanctimoniously decried his colleagues' use of the rules to do exactly what he had done repeatedly over many years. During the long and bitter debate, there has been plenty of hypocrisy to go around, but let us not deny Rep. Wilson his latest moment in the sun.
When Elephants Battle --
Under current world circumstances, it's understandable if regular Chronicle readers have lost pretty much all interest in the proceedings of the Texas Legislature. Whether you support or oppose the increasingly bloody U.S. adventure in Iraq, by contrast, the obscure and frequently enervating events proceeding daily in the Capitol might seem to fade into irrelevance. Nonetheless, I highly recommend regular visits via TV or the Web (www.capitol. state.tx.us) to the current debate on the House floor -- expected to continue at least through this weekend -- and to the webcast committee meetings being squeezed in between the histrionics. For the moment, it's the best show in town.
In addition to offering occasionally terrific melodrama -- choleric villains, outraged heroines, sinister alliances, stern rebukes -- the House debate is providing a vivid snapshot of the widening battle over legal rights in Texas and the nation. Wilson warned House members that the protracted mud wrestling is in fact a deceptive fight between "the haves and the haves" -- implicitly, wealthy corporate interests vs. wealthy plaintiffs' lawyers -- but that is true only in the sense that virtually every substantive lawsuit features of necessity opponents with deep pockets. With rare exceptions, the rest of us are only affected indirectly -- but often profoundly nonetheless.
That is, this year's "tort reform" in fact represents the biennial determination of the insurance industry and assorted corporate fellow travelers -- construction tycoons, hospital chains, nursing home companies, drug manufacturers -- to slam the courthouse door even more tightly against ordinary workers, consumers, and juries who might hold them financially accountable for misleading, injuring, poisoning, scalding, killing, or just fleecing their customers and the general public. The only thing unusual about the current battle is how determined the tort deformers appear to be -- at least in the current House debate -- to avoid any and all compromises on even the slightest detail of the legislation.
It may be a strategic decision: locking down an intransigent House bill to take to conference with the Senate, where the votes aren't as lopsided and a handful of moderate Republicans still have some stroke. But there should be no surprise that the Democratic opposition is refusing simply to throw up its hands and surrender.
The GOP is howling, with some justice, that the nearly 400 amendments filed by Dem opponents are no more than an obfuscating attempt to delay the inevitable. But Civil Practices Chairman Nixon guaranteed this bloody floor fight when -- by his own admission -- he "decided," in a private committee meeting, to combine the extremely controversial tort-reform measure (the original HB 4) with the much more popular (and officially emergency) medical malpractice reform legislation (HB 3). That strong-arm decision amounted to an open declaration of political war on the opponents of tort reform.
On the very first day of the session, Dems predicted that Speaker Craddick's radical centralization of committee assignments and related rule changes would lead to ram-rodded committees and disruptively bitter floor fights. November's victors are reaping exactly what they sowed.
Where Were We?
Seems like we're forgetting something. Ah, yes -- the rest of the public's business. As you may have noticed, the state budget remains in deep deficit, and the comptroller's office is strongly hinting that April will be the cruelest month. Both chambers have proposed extremely draconian cuts in all state services, while yet suggesting that when push comes to shove and April comes to May, they won't quite have to shove all the widows, orphans, elderly, disabled, ill, and poor out into the cold; yank health insurance from every schoolteacher in the state; cancel every prison rehabilitation program; ignore every festering environmental crisis; refuse to provide funds for all the textbooks and supplies from Texas classrooms ...
You know the list. As of yet, the political leadership, from Gov. Rick Perry on down, continues to insist those bills can be paid and the budget can be balanced without recourse to new revenues. Perry reiterated that claim this week -- and then pointed to health insurance for community college teachers and to university "special programs" (unspecified, but we presume he didn't mean football) as targets for additional cuts.
Judging from the current gridlock at the Capitol, we can presume that means liability protection for corporations is a major state of Texas priority, and that the education, health, and welfare of Texas citizens are not.
Perhaps you already knew that. 
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