Austin Chronicle: House Gives Perry the Finger

[Dover]

House Gives Perry the Finger
House Bills 2 & 3 die; it's back to square one
BY AMY SMITH

After a bizarre, yet thrilling, set of circumstances turned the special session on its ear Tuesday, Gov. Rick Perry ordered lawmakers back to the torture chamber today (Thursday) to try to salvage a school finance plan, along with the governor's political reputation.

The House, in a spectacular chain of maneuvers, effectively gave Perry the finger Tuesday, killing the school spending and tax bills in back-to-back assassinations. The actions created a rare taste of victory for the Democrats and bore out further doubt about the GOP leadership's ability to lead. More importantly, the events demonstrated a bipartisan agreement on school finance that runs counter to the wishes of Perry, House Speaker Tom Craddick and, to some extent, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst.

"It's sort of been a surreal day," said Ways and Means Committee Chair Jim Keffer before taking the lead in slaughtering the tax bill that he had reluctantly carried on behalf of Perry. "Mr. Speaker," he said grimly, "show me voting 'no' on House Bill 3." A whoop of joy went up from the floor. With that, 123 representatives joined Keffer in defeating his own bill....cont'd

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2005-07-29/pols_lege.html

[dogday]

1. Trust me, the whole state is giving him the finger

I would not buy a used car from this guy......

[Dover]

2. Wonder why Ross Perot is backing him (financially)?

Perry is about as dirty as they come. And that's saying something in this land of Delay.

[Why Syzygy]

3. Be sure to see this ~

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=180&topic_id=17619&mesg_id=17619

I moved out of state in '92 when Ann Richards was fully in charge. She left a surplus budget.
When I came back in '96 the state was in fulll digress at the hands of g the spoiled.
I love Ann's reference to that event. She said if she had known GW was gonna throw the state into a deficit, she would have spent every dime! And I'm sure she would have made magnificent choices on spending every bit.

We're taking our state back. :applause:

[ThJ]

4. Couple of things regarding that...

1) Ann, and the Democratically controlled Legislature, didn't create new programs placing stress on a decripit state revenue system which is entirely too reliant on sales taxes.

2) With the Republicans in power, there has been a lot of new spending, but no responsible funding of these programs, such as CHIP, which we created without funding it properly so that when the economy slowed down and tax revenues lagged, we had to cut people from the program.

[acmejack]

5. I was block walking yesterday for Andy Brown (Dist 48)

And people were uniformly disgusted with the lege & goodhair. I am feeling pretty hopeful about the next election. I think we are going to see some change for the better.