TXLEGE: SB 15 -- Case Study in Republican FAILURE

"My son, let them not depart from your eyes—
Keep sound wisdom and discretion;"
Proverbs 3:21

Following our discussion on Tuesday about the infuriating process which SB 15 is taking, we were asked for a follow up comment by the Texas Tribune:

“This bill has been languishing without a vote for six weeks,” said Adam Cahn, a service industry veteran who writes the Austin-based political blog, Cahnman's Musings. “Meanwhile, the authors are getting killed from all sides. This is the worst of all possible worlds.”

There are actually two problems.  In the short term, Dan Patrick and Brandon Creighton have failed basic bill management.  But the long term, and more important, failure is the failure of vision.

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Failure of Bill Management:

This is the basic blocking and tackling of the legislature.  Dan Patrick and Brandon Creighton are both veterans.  It's pathetic.

Here's the policy nut: Wage/benefit mandates and discrimination are separate components of employment law.  There is a case to be made, a quite compelling one, for having uniform statewide policies on both.  But they're SEPARATE F**KING ISSUES.

Whatever your personal opinion of the 'non-discrimination' carve out, Dan Patrick and Brandon Creighton are the ones who've been all over the map it. Reasonable people can disagree over whether it's prudent to tie these issues together [Hint: It's not]. But the Senate's current approach is guaranteed to piss the maximum number of people off, while satisfying the fewest.

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We have no specific knowledge, but this debacle wreaks of Steve Hotze.

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Failure of Vision:

Complicated, expensive, employment regulations beget fewer jobs and higher prices. While that's true for any level of government, it's even truer at the local level (because employers do business in multiple jurisdictions). This is Free Market 101 type stuff.

For a confident party making a proactive case for how liberty inevitably produces upward economic mobility, this is an easy sell.

Instead, our elected Republican leadership is in a defensive crouch, and their languid passivity enables their opponents to set terms of the debate.

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Bottom Line: This situation was completely preventable, yet here we are....