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11:30 p.m. update: After tea party-aligned legislators ground the work of the Texas House to a halt as a key legislative deadline approached at midnight, Rep. Drew Springer gave an emotional speech imploring his colleagues to move forward so the House could vote on a bill expanding access to stem cell treatment that he believes could help his wife, who uses a wheelchair.

It does some remarkable things, Springer, a Muenster Republican, said through tears while giving a personal privilege speech on adult stem cell treatments. It might give somebody like my wife a chance to walk.

Springers campaign website says: During the time Drew and Lydia were dating, some twenty-three years ago, Lydia was involved in a diving accident and has used a wheelchair since that time. Her ability not to let it slow her down has been a source of strength and inspiration to Drew.

His speech momentarily freed up the gridlock, allowing House Bill 810 by Rep. Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, to pass. The bill was named Charlies Law after former Rep. Charlie Howard, who died recently after a years-long battle with cancer.

But after the vote, the tea party-aligned Freedom Caucus went back to obstructing the work of the House as a protest to the leadership of Speaker Joe Straus, R-San Antonio, whom they view as insufficiently conservative.

Original story: A group of tea party-aligned Texas House members said Thursday night that they plan to defeat an entire agenda of routine bills scheduled to be approved Friday in retaliation for the House leadership casting aside bills favored by the more conservative members.

The Freedom Caucus, as the group began calling itself this year, said it will kill other members bills by submitting a petition to remove them from the Consent Calendar, the agenda for routine bills that are usually approved without significant debate.

Under the House rules, five members can request that a bill be removed from that calendar, requiring it to be debated and adopted like a regular bill. Because key legislative deadlines pass Thursday and Friday, pulling the measures from the agenda Friday will effectively kill them. Capitol observers have taken to calling the impending bill slaughter the Mothers Day Massacre.

The Freedom Caucus decided to pursue the maneuver after learning that some bills it authored have been left off Fridays calendar.

This is another shot, another direct shot, at the conservative members of this House, said Rep. Jeff Leach, R-Plano.

Throughout the legislative session, members of the caucus have been pulling bills from the expedited agenda, enraging their colleagues in both parties and slowing the work of the House.

Leach, however, said that when Freedom Caucus members mess with bills on the calendar, it is for policy reasons, but when the House leadership fails to advance the Freedom Caucus legislation, it is due to politics.

For the Freedom Caucus and for the conservative members of the House, its always been about policy, 100 percent of the time, he said. Whats happened to us has been personal retribution.

High-ranking Republican Rep. Dennis Bonnen, who is often enlisted to broker agreements between the leadership and far-right wing of the party, objected to the caucus characterization of the House leadership not being conservative enough, noting high-profile bills that have already passed.

So sanctuary cities is not a conservative issue for them? A balanced budget with $1 billion less than the current budget is not a conservative issue for them? Bonnen said.

Still, Bonnen said, the caucus has the right to hold up Fridays agenda.

They have the right within the rules to use the rules however they think it will give them an advantage, said Bonnen, who chairs the Ways and Means Committee.

Administration Committee Chairman Charlie Geren, R-Fort Worth, also objected to the caucus calling the House leadership insufficiently conservative For them to mischaracterize something is not unusual and said it had the right to kill the bills on the consent agenda.

As long as theyre following the rules, they can do what they need to do, he said.

Geren said he personally wasnt worried about the Friday agenda defeated.

I dont send bills to the Local and Consent Calendar Committee, he said. Its just too easy to get knocked off.

Continued here:
Rep. Springer's tearful stem cell speech breaks tea party obstruction - Austin American-Statesman