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Despite the states reputation as a conservative bastion, the Republican speaker of the Texas House refused to pass a number of conservative reforms during the regular biennial legislative session, as a result, the states governor has called lawmakers back for the first special session since he was elected as governor.

Gov. Greg Abbott called the legislature back after conservative fallout, spurred by legislative inaction, following the close of the regular session.

Items like ethics reform, property tax reform, school choice, and the renewing of a commission that ensures doctors in the state remained licensed were left unaddressed, mostly due to a House blockade under the leadership of Speaker of the state House Joe Straus.

Conservatives in the state have been pushing for repeal for some time. Two legislative sessions in a row, legislation has passed the Texas Senate only to be obstructed in the House.

In 2015, Texas last legislative session, a bill was filed to end the practice.

Although it passed through the State Senate, stall tactics often used by Straus to kill legislation blocked the bill from advancing.

Using one of the members of his governing coalition, Texas state Rep. Byron Cook, Straus delayed the bill until there was no chance of it passing the full House before the final deadline.

House leadership has a history of holding conservative reforms hostage because of union cash. Though most union campaign contributions went to Democrats, public unions spent more than $1.6 million on Texas legislators during the most recent campaign cycle.

Overall, Speaker Straus received the most of those dollars, bringing the bulk of union contributions during his speakership to over a quarter of a million dollars. After Straus, the second highest Republican was Cook.

Those who control how legislation moves through the House are more than willing to give in to union demands so they can enjoy their continued support. A letter released by one of the unions following the last legislative session shows how much they value Straus and Cook.

State Representative Byron Cook is Chairman of the powerful State Affairs Committee and is closely aligned with Joe Straus, Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives. Last session, our friend Byron Cook led the effort that stopped further consideration of the bill that would have ended payroll deduction of union dues.

The letter goes on to urge members to support Cook at the polls for his reelection as he felt his seat was vulnerable.

After the bill to end union dues collection was killed last session, activists spent the interim voicing their desire to see the issue reconsidered.

The states Lt. Gov. created a task force to further explore union dues reform, two million primary voters voted overwhelmingly in favor of a proposition to end the practice, and delegates to the states 2016 GOP convention passed a plank calling for its end as well.

The proposition, while non-binding, passed by 83 percent to 17 percent, and the convention plank passed by 96 percent.

Even Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, has weighed in on the issue. Norquist sent a letter to lawmakers in April urging them to vote YES on the House and Senate versions of the bill.

Legislators had their marching orders, the large majority of Texans wanted them to ban government entities from collecting dues.

As expected, the Senate passed the bill without a hitch. But again, the House was the impediment to its final passage. Indeed, despite being a priority of the governor, it didnt even receive a committee hearing in the House.

Unions oppose the legislation because they claim it is a union-busting measure, but in reality it just stops government from performing a function that it shouldnt be doing in the first place.

An argument often used is that it is easier and more secure for their members to have dues deducted through government rather than any of the other methods offered by private companies.

That is simply untrue, the notion that government provides a more user-friendly and secure method than the private sector is laughable. Government systems are often the target of data breaches and hackers, many of which are successful.

As a matter of fact, two of the ten largest data breaches happened to Texas government entities.

In 2011, the Texas Comptrollers office discovered a breach that made the personal information of 3.5 million Texans public, costing taxpayers over $1.8 million. In 2012, personal information of 6.5 million Texas voters was compromised mistakenly by the Texas Attorney Generals Office.

Aside from those large hacks, the Texas Department of Public Safety, Dallas Police Department, and Texas Police Chiefs Association have all been hacked.

With as many advancements that have been made in online banking, it takes no more than a few clicks, similar to setting up a direct deposit or auto-pay for bills, to sign up for dues deduction.

Some Texas teachers associations, like the Houston Federation of Teachers, are already transitioning its members to a non-government dues collection method.

Starting in August, all 6,000 members of that union will be transferred from the government dues collection program to automated bank draft that will deduct dues after their pay has been deposited in their accounts. If the government system is easier and more secure, why make the transition when there is no state government mandate to do so?

Through their complacency with this current process, lawmakers are allowing government to be involved in a partisan fight.

Unions use dues to pay for lobbyists who often lobby for legislation that negatively impacts small businesses, like minimum wage laws.

Also, they use funds for organizing efforts like rallies and protests like their ongoing, summer-long organized effort called the Summer of Resistance. The effort is meant to promote rallies, protests, and demonstrations to oppose Texas sanctuary city law.

The arguments made against reforming this practice are selfish, the sole reason Texas unions are fighting to keep it in place is because they dont want their membership to consciously have to pay their dues. Requiring them to make the decision every pay period, quarter, or year means that members would be more likely to question what benefits they are receiving in exchange for the dues they are paying.

This legislation does not prohibit or limit anyones ability to join a union, restrict speech, or actions of that union, it simply requires them to collect their own dues the way that the private sector does.

Because of the states biennial legislature, Texans usually have to wait two years to reconsider reforms that their legislators failed to address. This time, they are being given a second chance to address this and many other issues.

With the special session currently underway, time will tell if lawmakers will side with the will of voters or if union influence will prevail.

Charles Blain is the executive director of Restore Justice USA, a criminal justice reform project of Empower Texans. He campaigned for Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in 2014 and has a background in public policy. Follow him on Twitter @cjblain10

The views expressed by contributors are their own and are not the views of The Hill.

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Why is a Texas Republican blocking union reforms? - The Hill (blog)

Rand Paul has helped to block Republican efforts to introduce a new health bill. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Rand Paul, one of the conservative senators who has helped to hold up Republican healthcare reform, on Sunday derided the current Senate bill as a monstrosity and a porkfest and said he would not vote for it to proceed to debate this week.

With Donald Trump telling senators to stay in Washington until they have a replacement for Barack Obamas Affordable Care Act (ACA), majority leader Mitch McConnell is reportedly looking to hold a vote to proceed to debate as early as Tuesday.

McConnell must attempt to win over conservatives such as Paul, of Kentucky, Ted Cruz of Texas and Mike Lee of Utah, who oppose government intervention in the insurance market.

Moderates such as Susan Collins of Maine have expressed opposition to the bill in terms of its $800bn cuts to Medicaid, the government programme that supports the young, elderly, poor and infirm.

The real question is what are we moving to, what are we opening to debate to, said Paul on CNNs State of the Union. Last week the Senate leadership said it would be a clean repeal, like the 2015 bill that we all voted for, and I think thats a good idea.

Obama vetoed the 2015 repeal, one of a succession of attempts by Republicans in Congress to bring down his signature legislative achievement.

Trump, eager for legislative success after six months in office without it, first said this week that the ACA should be repealed before a replacement was ready; then said it should simply be allowed to fail; then demanded a replacement at the same time as a repeal.

Paul continued: The alternative is the Senate leadership bill that doesnt repeal Obamacare, is Obamacare-lite and is loaded with pork, its become a porkfest where theyre dumping billions of dollars into pet projects for individual senators. Im not for that.

Ive told them I will vote for a motion to proceed if we proceed to a clean repeal vote. If it fails they can put up their monstrosity that they want to put forward, but Im not for that because Im not for the taxpayer subsidising private industry.

Speaking to CBSs Face the Nation, Collins said uncertainty over what would be voted on this week was not a good approach to facing legislation that affects millions of people and one sixth of our economy.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said this week that repeal of the ACA without a replacement would lead to 32m Americans losing health insurance in the next decade.

The CBO score on the Senate healthcare bill put that figure at 22m. Republican healthcare proposals remain extremely unpopular with the voting public.

On Friday, the Senate parliamentarian threw another obstacle in the Republicans way. The chief rules adviser to the upper chamber said several provisions of the bill including the defunding of Planned Parenthood were not eligible for the 51-vote threshold of the budget reconciliation process and would have to attract 60 votes to pass.

The 48 Senate Democrats are united in their opposition to Republican attempts to repeal the ACA.

On Saturday, Trump included healthcare in a sequence of 10 morning tweets, writing: The Republican senators must step up to the plate and, after seven years, vote to repeal and replace. Next, tax reform and infrastructure. WIN!

Obamacare is dead and the Democrats are obstructionists, no ideas or votes, only obstruction. It is solely up to the 52 Republican senators!

He then included healthcare in a speech to a military audience in Norfolk, Virginia marking the launch of the USS Gerald R Ford, a new nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

You can call those senators to make sure you get healthcare, the president said, a political remark that some observers deemed inappropriate.

Ben Rhodes, a former senior adviser to Obama, tweeted that Trumps words were a huge deal. Obama (or Bushes) never would have done this. Violates most fundamental norms separating military and politics.

The president is committed to repealing and replacing Obamacare, said Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the new White House press secretary, on Sunday on ABCs This Week. Inaction is not an option and the president was making that clear yesterday and speaking not just to the people in the room but to the American people.

On CBS, White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci was asked if Trumps mixed messaging on healthcare could damage the Republican push for reform.

Trumps contradictory tweets, Scaramucci said, showed the president signaling over the top of the mainstream media.

He basically wants to repeal and replace Obamacare, he said. He knows thats the best thing for the American people. It turns out that he may not be able to get that done with a recalcitrant Congress.

Read more:
Latest Republican health bill 'a porkfest, a monstrosity', Rand Paul says - The Guardian

Demonstrators protesting the Senate GOPhealthcare legislation were escorted out of Sen. Cory GardnerCory GardnerProtesters interrupt Senate Republicans speech over healthcare Interior recommends preserving Colorado site's monument status Overnight Energy: Exxon sues feds over M fine | Deputy Interior pick advances | Oil concerns hold up Russia sanctions push MOREs (R-Co.) speech addressing healthcare at a conservative conference on Friday.

Video shows police escorting protesters, who were chanting save our liberty, no cuts to Medicaid during Gardners speech, out of the room.

Here's video of the moment when people interrupted Sen. Gardner and when the police showed up to escort them out. pic.twitter.com/eLaKChOxty

The protesters were from a disability advocate group known as Atlantis ADAPT, according to The Denver Post.

Denvers NBC affiliate KUSA reported two protesters were escorted out.

No arrests were made, according to Denver police.

The latest healthcare protests come after Gardner was subpoenaed to appear in court for cases of five protesters who were arrested at his Denver office.

Gardner is one of many Senate Republicans facing heat for the conferences ObamaCare repeal and replace legislation.

Major portions of the bill require 60 votes, according to the Senate parliamentarian, meaning they most likely will not survive on the Senate floor.

- This post was updated at 10:56 a.m.

See the article here:
Protesters interrupt Senate Republican's speech over healthcare ... - The Hill

Minutes after a bipartisan coalition of California lawmakers voted to extend the states landmark climate change policy for another decade, Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown stood in front of a bank of television cameras and compared the plan to one championed 30 years ago by GOP icon Ronald Reagan.

Back then, the Republican president helped negotiate the Montreal protocol to curb the release of gases that were destroying the ozone layer, persuading Republicans to join Democrats in approving an insurance policy that made economic sense in case environmentalists were right. Brown said the California cap and trade program the Legislature approved Monday night won support for a similar reason.

This is an insurance policy, he said. I think the business community, to a great extent, sees that and agrees with where were going.

Indeed, though major business groups have fought against California climate policies in the past, they backed the plan to extend cap and tradea five-year-old marketplace in which companies buy and sell permits to emit greenhouse gases. Business support prompted some Republicans to favor the legislation as well, leading to a bipartisan vote that notches a win for Browns environmental agenda. In fact some progressive groups complained that the bipartisan negotiations had resulted in a monstrosity of a plan overly favorable to corporate interests.

That the Democratic governor celebrated its passage by invoking Reagan, the legendary conservative, signals the political surprise underlying the fight over how to stem global warming: the Republican case for cap and trade. Its hard to imagine it on the national stage, with Republicans in Washington challenging the veracity of climate science and President Donald Trump pulling the country out of an international agreement to slow global warming.

But in California, a deep blue state leading the charge to curb climate change, the question for many Republicans isnt whether global warming is happeningits what kind of policies are best to address it.

I know for some, theyre going to look at this and say what in the world is going on? Why are Republicans talking about something like cap and trade? Assembly Republican Leader Chad Mayes of Yucca Valley said following the vote Monday night.

Well Ill tell you, we believe that markets are better than Soviet-style command and control. We believe that markets are better than the government coercing people into doing things that they dont want to do. We believe that businesses in California want to do the right thing, which is why we supported cap and trade.

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Most Republicans disagreed with himthe bill won support from just eight of 38 Republican legislators, and all but a handful of Democrats. The GOP divide revealed a split between business-aligned Republicans who favored cap and trade, and others who rejected it with a Trump-style message of economic populism. Assemblyman Travis Allen, a conservative Republican from Huntington Beach who is running for governor next year, called cap and trade a continuation of California Democrats attack on the working middle class and the poor of this state, because it will cause fuel prices to go up.

But polluting industries that participate in cap and tradeoil companies, utilities, food processors and othersbroadly agree that cap and trade will cost less than the alternatives. Thats because last year, California enshrined in state law a goal to slash greenhouse gas emissions by a whopping 40 percent between 2020 and 2030. Business groups fought hard against the bill establishing that goal because it will make operations more expensive for companies that send climate-warming gas into the air. But they lost that fight, and with the target now set, cap and trade appeals to businesses as a way to maintain some flexibility while they work to reach the collective emissions reduction goal.

Once (the law) was in place and we had the goals that we must reach, it was all about finding the least expensive path for our economy, said Gino DiCaro, vice president of the California Manufacturers and Technology Association, which opposed the plan to lower emissions last year but supported this years cap and trade bill.

Without cap and trade, many business groups said, the state could impose requirements for slashing emissions that would be more onerous on business, speculating that air board bureaucrats could cook up tougher regulations or a new carbon tax that would cost a lot more than cap and trade.

DiCaro pointed to research showing that costs would go up three times as much without cap and trade if the state came up with other ways to reduce emissions. The California Chamber of Commerce also supported the cap and trade extension, even though its been challenging the program in court for years. Spokeswoman Denise Davis said the Chamber has backed cap and trade since it was first envisioned in 2006 and that its lawsuit only focused on whether the auction component of cap and trade amounted to an illegal taxan argument the courts rejected.

Even though most Republican lawmakers opposed the bill to extend cap and trade, those who voted for it argued that it was good for business. And by negotiating with Brown over many months, Mayes, the Assembly Republican leader, was able to extract key concessions that made a vote for cap and trade more enticing to some GOP lawmakers. The package of bills includes the repeal of a firefighting fee on rural homeowners that Republicans have long tried to scrap, a tax break for energy companies pursuing clean energy projects, the extension of a sales tax break for manufacturing companies, and a constitutional amendment that could give Republicans more say in 2024 on how to spend cap-and-trade revenues.

After the bill passed, the California Business Round Tablea consortium of the states largest employerslaunched a series of social media ads thanking the eight Republicans who voted for cap and trade. But a bitter backlash was brewing among conservative Republicans, with one publicly calling on Mayes to resign.

Yet former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Republican who signed the 2006 bill that led to the creation of Californias cap and trade, took to Facebook to thank Mayes for following in the footsteps of great Republicans like Teddy Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, who fought for his own cap and trade program to repair the ozone layer.

I hope Republicans around the country can learn from the example of Assemblyman Mayes and his fellow Republicans that we can fight for free market policies to clean up our environment for our children at the same time we fight for a booming economy.

CALmatters.org is a nonprofit, nonpartisan media venture explaining California policies and politics.

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Latest California innovation: A Republican case for cap and trade - LA Daily News

Dr. Kelli Ward concedes to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in Scottsdale, Arizona on August 30, 2016. David Kadlubowski / AP file

McCain, 80, revealed on Wednesday that doctors had diagnosed him with

Ward shared on Twitter Wednesday immediately after McCains office announced the senator was suffering from an aggressive form of brain cancer that she was Wishing Mr. McCain comfort and peace. Two days later, she went on the Indiana radio show to announce that his absence from the Senate cant stand.

In a statement shared with NBC News on Friday, Ward said she was praying for McCain and his family and called the diagnosis "grim."

"Senator McCain has an aggressive brain cancer that is both devastating and debilitating," Ward said. "When the time comes that Senator McCain can no longer perform his duties in the Senate at full capacity, he owes it to the people of Arizona to step aside."

Ward then cited her experience as a physician.

"Senator McCain and his family have a lot of hard decisions to make," she added in the statement. "As a doctor, Ive counseled patients in similar situations and these end-of-life choices are never easy. I usually advise terminal patients to reduce stress, relax, and spend time laughing with loved ones."

Ward is an osteopathic physician and former Arizona state senator. She said during the Indiana interview that she could not presume to understand McCains prognosis and added that she is a Christian who believes in miracles.

Nevertheless, she concluded that McCains full force return to the Senate was unlikely.

After listing a few vague items on President Donald Trumps agenda secure the border and stop illegal immigration and repeal Obamacare and fix the economy and fix the Veterans Administration Ward said that Arizonans cant be at a standstill while we wait for John McCain to determine what hes going to do.

Julie Tarallo, McCains spokeswoman, declined to respond to Wards statements.

McCain, for his part,

Ward said in the radio interview that she would be a strong choice to replace him.

"I have a proven track record in the Arizona state senate of being extremely effective and of listening to the people I represent," she said. "I made an extremely good showing against Sen. McCain against all odds. He outspent me nearly 10 to 1."

Ward lost to McCain by 12.5 points in 2016.

Flake, who Ward is challenging in the 2018 Republican primary, said he was taken aback by Wards radio appearance.

"John McCain is a fighter and an American hero, Flake said in a statement. I fully expect to see him back in the senate soon. Im dumbstruck by Kelli Wards comments.

McCains congressional colleagues

"He has never shied from a fight and I know that he will face this challenge with the same extraordinary courage that has characterized his life," Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement. "We all look forward to seeing this American hero again soon."

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Arizona Republican Says McCain Should Resign, Adds She'd Be Strong Replacement - NBCNews.com