The AAS outlines the dilemmas members of the Texas Leg's Tea Part Caucus are facing as they try to figure out what to do about the budget shortfall and the impact it is likely to have on education and health care in the state:
Like many who ran for and won seats in the Texas House last year, state Rep. Dan Huberty courted tea party activists in his district, promising to cut the fat out of the state's budget and hold the line on taxes.
But after two months in Austin, Huberty, a former Humble school board president, has seen that much of the budget fat that lawmakers are looking to cut could have a direct impact on the classrooms in the school district he led.
Huberty is one of 11 freshman Republicans who won seats in the House and then joined the Tea Party Caucus, a group of legislators pledged to control government spending and fight off tax increases. And though they remain opposed to tax hikes, the new lawmakers — like many of their veteran colleagues — have seen in recent weeks the difficulty of closing a budget gap with spending cuts alone.
The state is billions of dollars short of what it needs to continue current programs. To avoid tax increases, House and Senate leaders proposed budgets in January that would slash spending on public education and health care — cuts that would affect classrooms, nursing homes and colleges in just about every lawmaker's hometown.
"I think there were a lot of deer-in-the-headlight looks when the budget was laid out," Huberty said
... Now that they're coming out of the 60-day blackout period at the session's start, in which lawmakers are barred from taking up most legislation, freshman lawmakers are learning the difference between campaigning and governing, said James Henson, head of UT's Texas Politics Project .
