Budget: The Kirk's Notes Version

Kirk Watson (Photo by John Anderson)

Austin state Sen. Kirk Watson understands that lawmaking sometimes requires taking half a loaf. Or in his case, two-fifths. Before the session started, he called on the Senate to implement a rule mandating a five-day waiting period between the drafting of the conference committee's version of the budget and the Senate vote on it. The wait is necessary, he said, because when bills go into the conference committee – which is charged with resolving differences between House and Senate bills – they often come out with substantial differences, and no one has enough time to analyze the changes.

When the Senate voted on its rules last week, Watson couldn't wrangle up enough support for five days, but he got what he called a "very good compromise": 48 hours for people to see the "Outside the Bounds" resolution, which describes all of the changes made in conference committee. While two days isn't nearly as helpful as five, it's better than the 24 hours that's been the norm, allowing time to read "a CliffsNotes version" of the changes "so that we know what we're voting on," Watson told reporters. "This is a real win for honesty and transparency in government budgeting."

Interestingly, Watson (and the rest of the Democrats) ended up voting against the new Senate rules overall because they include an exception to the two-thirds rule – a tradition requiring at least 21 senators to agree before legislation can be brought to the floor for debate – that would allow a simple majority to bring up voter ID bills. See "Identity Crisis" for more on voter ID.