The insurgents will surely try to keep the pressure on today. The resolution to go outside the bounds of the two budget bills is a plump target, and so is the budget itself. I don’t think that an attack on either will be successful. The Craddick Ds tend to be solid on procedural issues. Many of them are on appropriations and have goodies in the budget. So you have three constituencies voting for the budget: (1) Republicans who support Craddick; (2) The Craddick Ds and others with goodies in the budget; (3) Everybody who wants to go home for the summer. Tell me that’s not a majority.
If I were voting today, I would have to vote no. I’m from Galveston, and UTMB got screwed. But as someone who followed the process, I think there’s a lot to like about the budget. We started with the best base bill ever, and it only got better. The transportation riders are very important. Ogden did a great job of reining in Tx-DOT.
