Change gears. The elections, which were almost a week ago, are old news.
It’s time to move on and to move the pending Texas legislative session to the top of the list of “Things that are looming.” To wit: Today is the first day lawmakers can start filing legislation for the session that begins in January. It’s time to see what the winners are going to try to accomplish.
Most of what they file won’t pass, but the Texas Legislature has had better luck in recent years at getting things done than Congress.
. . . The budget will be the hardest and most important legislation to pass. State revenue is expected to be tight. Lawmakers are coming to Austin with less money in the state’s pockets than two years ago, when the budget was relatively easy to put together. And they’ve got expensive things to consider, including crises facing abused and foster children the state has promised to protect, rapid growth in the number of kids in Texas schools, growing disparities in funding from one school district to the next, rising pension liabilities and whatever comes out of federal efforts to rewrite the Affordable Care Act and increase the amount Washington spends on border security and immigration.
