Staff Writers
The Texas House will decide Thursday on its rules of engagement for the rest of the legislative session – a brisk battle over sensitive issues such as whether Democrats should lead committees, which bills should be given priority, and the proper protocol for bucking the authority of the powerful speaker’s office.
At stake in the fight – which will focus on two resolutions filed by veteran House Republicans – are the levers of power in a chamber that recently emerged from a bruising intraparty clash to determine who would lead the GOP-dominated House.
House members are also likely to debate amendments to the proposals that in the past have covered a wide range of topics, including sensitive social issues.
The marquee battle is the debate over whether the minority party in the House, the Democrats, should be banned from holding speaker-appointed committee chairmanships – and the attendant power to kill legislation without a floor vote and decide which bills have the potential to pass.
Get the latest politics news from North Texas and beyond.
Or with:
By signing up you agree to our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
Those include priorities critical to Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, chief among them a school choice program he has tried to get through the Texas House for years. Democrats and rural Republicans have successfully fended off voucher-style bills for decades. Abbott used millions in donations to knock most of his GOP opponents out of office during last year’s Republican primaries.
Thursday’s showdown will be the first floor test of new House Speaker Dustin Burrows’ ability to lead a sharply divided chamber, with its 62 Democrats and 88 Republicans. A majority of his fellow Republicans opposed Burrows as speaker, but the Lubbock Republican GOP supporters helped him win the vote for speaker with the backing of a majority of House Democrats.
Burrows’ critics during his speaker’s race against state Rep. David Cook, R-Mansfield, said his bipartisan support and stated willingness to work across the aisle to help Democrats represent their districts will hurt the House’s ability to pass conservative legislation.
Some activists said his refusal to pledge to ban Democratic chairs in the months leading up to his election to the post on Jan. 14 was a sign of weakness.
One of the major sticking points in the rules resolution, by Corpus Christi Republican Rep. Todd Hunter, who chairs the powerful State Affairs Committee: Republicans would be banned from being vice-chairs of committees under a section of the resolution that prohibits the speaker from appointing those second-in-command positions from within the party that holds the House majority.
The proposal also establishes 11 new subcommittees, which have been led by Democrats and could continue to be under the proposed rules.
For some GOP activists, it’s still too much.
“All Burrows had to do was let the Texas House vote on whether Democrats could be chairman,” Luke Macias, a conservative podcaster and longtime Texas activist, wrote on X.com. “Instead he filed a rules package at 4 a.m. that gives his GOP members a way to say ‘I voted to ban Democrat chairs’ while giving Democrats a lot of new power.”
The proposed rules package also would institute other changes that could affect the flow of legislation to the House floor. It would cut seven committees, create three new ones — on government efficiency; trade, workforce and economic development; and intergovernmental affairs. The Defense and Veterans’ Affairs Committee would be merged into a Committee on Homeland Security, and the Public Safety and Veterans’ Affairs Committee would combine with a subcommittee on defense and veterans’ affairs.
The package would also expand the membership of several committees, which typically have five to nine members, by two. The number of standing committees in recent sessions tends to hover between 30 and 40.
Democrats have held a handful of chairmanship positions – less than a dozen – under every Republican speaker since state Rep. Tom Craddick, R-Midland, assumed the post in 2003 as the first GOP House speaker in 130 years.
As the state has moved to the right since the GOP assumed control of both the House and the Senate that year, banning Democratic chairs in a Republican-led chamber has become a favorite rallying cry for conservatives – from the grassroots to party leaders, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Houston Republican who loudly criticized the practice and recently appointed an all-GOP panel of chairs in the Texas Senate.
The Republican Party of Texas last year made the ban on Democratic chairs part of its platform, telling its members in the Capitol that supporting anything less would signal disloyalty to their voters.
Earlier this week, state party Chairman Abraham George called on lawmakers to enshrine the ban in their rules, saying it’s “past time we end this practice.”
“Texans elected a strong Republican majority in the Texas House because they pledged to deliver on its promises of limited government, security borders, and fiscal responsibility,” George said in a statement. “Allowing Democrats to serve as committee chairs undermines the mandate given by voters and weakens their ability to advance the conservative agenda.”
The House only has to decide by a simple majority whether to tie Burrows’ hands on who he can appoint.
Hours before the debate Thursday, members of a citizens’ group known as the Protect Childhood Initiative gathered in the House gallery, above the floor where the votes are taken. Their red T-shirts read, “Ban Democratic Chairs.”
The House will also take up a separate resolution, filed by House Administration Chair Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, known as the “housekeeping” resolution. The resolution, which can also be subject to floor amendments, handles financial and budget matters in the chamber, as well as personnel issues and protocols.
Lawmakers will debate whether to allow the speaker to appoint a licensed Texas attorney to provide legal assistance to and representation for the House, whether to allow members to exempt employees from legislative salary caps, and a proposed increase in representatives’ legislative expense accounts.
Karen Brooks Harper has covered Texas politics in and out of Austin for nearly 30 years. She's also covered the cartel wars along the TX-MX border, Congress in Mexico City, and 6 hurricanes, among other stories. Raised on blues and great food in the MS Delta, she lives in ATX with her family, her guitar, and her boxing gloves. In that order.
Nolan covers Texas politics. Before relocating to Austin in June 2024, he spent nearly a decade in Washington, D.C., reporting on national politics, including the White House, Congress and presidential campaigns. He is a graduate of Florida A&M University.
