#TXLEGE: House Budget Night Roundup

"Wealth gained by dishonesty will be diminished,
But he who gathers by labor will increase."
Proverbs 13:11

We don't have a lot to say about Thursday nights fiasco.  It was exactly what you would expect from Team Straus.  The only surprise is the degree to which they're doing everything out in the open.

That being said, several other folks have takes that are worth reading:

• LoneStarVoice has calculates the degree to which the Democrats dominated:
  

  "However you look at it, anywhere from 55% to 63% of amendments to the budget were offered by Democrats. And that's not to mention the fact that the budget withdraws $2.5 Billion from the Rainy Day Fund, a key objective of the Democratic membership."
  
  In a state dominated by the Republican Party – the House is 63% Republican – the Democrats continue to exercise an impressively disproportionate amount of power.

• Julie McCarty summarizes the individual accomplishments of the Freedom Caucus members: 

• The left-leaning Texas Observer correctly observes that the Freedom caucus got horsewhipped, but completely whiffs on the underlying dynamic:

The other major source of daytime ruckus was a series of measures by the House’s tea party faction — Observer favorites Jonathan Stickland, Briscoe Cain, Tony Tinderholt and others — to muck up little parts of state government they don’t like, to derail other members’ amendments, and to shame the cabal they say runs the House....Instead of focusing on real examples of government corruption and incompetence, they putter around, doing nothing and getting repeatedly sonned.

Of course, what the Observer misses is that in a session session where House leadership is openly promoting left-wing priorities (see LoneStarVoice post on partisan win rates above), it shouldn't surprise anyone that the Freedom Caucus should be shut down more viciously than ever.

[Note: If the Observer wanted to instead criticize the Tea Party for not doing a good enough job during primary season, with the result that they simply don't have the votes to challenge the speaker, they would be standing on much firmer ground.]

•  We posted the following meme to Facebook:
  

• The Trib has a good write up of the school choice amendment; the school choice folks have their record vote...it'll be interesting to see if they use it effectively.

• Empower Texans has a good write up of the entire night here.

• Matt Rinaldi got John Zerwas to admit leadership's long game:
  
  

Bottom Line:  It just is what it is.  And it was completely predictable following the last round of primaries.  It'll be interesting to see where the attention span of the people complaining on social media this weekend stands in January and February....