Texas Legislators Ranked by National Review

The National Journal has issued its 2006 ratings, ranking the U.S. Senate and Congress according to their liberal or conservative voting tendencies.

No, Texas didn't score the most conservative senator. That honor went to Jim DeMent, R-South Carolina. We came close, however, with Sen. John Cornyn at no. 4. That this loyalist to the Bush administration should crack the top ten shouldn't come as any surprise. Kay Bailey Hutchison was all the way back at no. 39.

Cornyn's ultra-conservatism may help explain why he'll be facing a serious challenger in the 2008 election. If you'd like to make a contribution to Cornyn's eventual Democratic rival, click here.

On the congressional side, North Texas Republicans are heavily weighted in the top one hundred most conservative. Two Dallas County congressmen cracked the top ten, including Pete Sessions, R-Dallas, and Sam Johnson, R-Plano. Other area congressmen include no. 22 Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, no. 61 Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, no. 89 Kay Granger, R-Ft. Worth and no. 97 Joe Barton, R-Ennis. Rounding out the reminaing North Texas Republicans were no. 109 Michael Burgess, R-Lewisville, no. 132, Ralph Hall, R-Rockwall.

For Democrats, the Chet Edwards, D-Waco, ranked no. 237. Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas, ranked no. 333. And Texas' most liberal Democrat was Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin, at no. 399.

North Texans Debate the President's Escalation Plans

H. Con. Res. 63 --Resolved by the House of Representatives (the Senate concurring), That--
(1) Congress and the American people will continue to support and protect the members of the United States Armed Forces who are serving or who have served bravely and honorably in Iraq; and
(2) Congress disapproves of the decision of President George W. Bush announced on January 10, 2007, to deploy more than 20,000 additional United States combat troops to Iraq.

As rumors of Republican defections surface, the congressional debate on the Iraq Resolution continues unabated today.

Despite having failed to secure any resolution to the Iraq crisis while in power, the Republicans now promise to snipe at any proposal, no matter how cautious, that would criticize the President's failed war plans. The House version of the Iraq Resolution is a non-binding statement opposing the President's plan to send more troops to Iraq. Make no mistake - Bush is determined to proceed with this ill-conceived plan, despite the lack of support from Congress, the military or the American people. It's a huge political risk, and judging from this post from Gonzo Muckraker, the Republicans know it.

The stench of political desperation became so rank last week that a wisely anonymous staffer from the offices of either Rep. Shadegg (Arr-AZ) or Rep. Hoekstra (Arr-MI) leaked an insider memo to GOP friendlies, outlining how the party will attempt to avoid the debate. Their “strategy” - quoted verbatim - is …

“The debate should not be about the surge or its details. This debate should not even be about the Iraq war to date, mistakes that have been made, or whether we can, or cannot, win militarily. If we let Democrats force us into a debate on the surge or the current situation in Iraq, we lose.”

Read the resolution. Anyone voting against this resolution is voting for escalation. Given the unpopularity of Bush's proposal, the Republicans don't want to debate that issue, so they simply sidestep it altogether. Instead, they whine, misdirect and fall back on the tired fear-mongering that got us here in the first place.

Let's see which of our North Texas Republicans got the memo. Here is a selection of comments from the floor of the House yesterday.

Pete Sessions (R- Dallas): "With this resolution my colleagues on the other side of the aisle provide the troops with nothing: no guarantees that we will continue to fund their heroic efforts; no guarantees that Congress will heed the advice of the Iraq Study group -- which notes on page 73 of their report that it would 'support a short-term redeployment or surge of American combat forces to stabilize Baghdad, or to speed up the training and equipping mission.'

Nor does it provide the American people with a clear picture of our direction in Iraq -- it simply says 'no' to the only strategy for success which has been put forward."

Michael Burgess (R- Lewisville): "When I was in Iraq in August of 2005, General Casey told myself and a group of us who were there, that 'There is no group in the world that can stand up to the American military. In fact, the only organized body in the world capable of defeating the American military was the American Congress.' I believe he was right......"

"I fully recognize that by voting against this resolution, I put myself in jeopardy of re-election, and I am willing to do that because I believe a vote for this resolution puts my country's fate in significant jeopardy for decades to come. ... Is it in our road national interest to win this fight? Can we prevail? Can we provide a modicum of security in the country of Iraq? Can we provide a modicum of sovereignty in the country of Iraq? For me, the answer ... is yes."

So Burgess is prepared to stake his future re-election on support for the surge. Let's see how that plays out in 2008.

[Note: C-SPAN has video links for the full text of the speeches, sorted by state. As soon as the link is updated, we'll provide it. ]

The Parliamentarian

John McClelland at My Little Corner of Democracy brought to our attention a video highlighting the dispute between the Democrats and Republicans last week over the "closed rule" debate in Congress.

Our congressional neighbors, Joe Barton (R-TX) and Michael Burgess (R-TX) were involved in a parliamentary lambasting by the acting Speaker of their House session, Barney Frank (D-MA) . Patrick McHenry (R-NC) was the main culprit in all of this, but it is a good example of why a representative might want to learn Robert's Rules of Order before attempting to work a debate. And just remember the past actions of the chair do not matter! :-) Watch the video by clicking here.

The controversy the Republicans were trying to capitalize on related to the fact that the minimum wage bill exempted the U.S. territory American Samoa-- a move that some suggest would benefit Starkist, a company located in the San Francisco district of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Now we all know Barney Frank isn't known for being shy about stating his mind, (and a first-rate mind at that) but there's a little backstory that you should be aware of when you watch this that goes a long way toward explaining the, well, let's say relish, with which he dishes out this particular parliamentary lesson.

You see, before the Democrats took over Congress, the Republicans had made a mockery of parliamentary rule. From the Rolling Stone's article, The Worst Congress Ever....

.....The Republicans who control this Congress are revolutionaries, and they have brought their revolutionary vision for the House and Senate quite unpleasantly to fruition. In the past six years they have castrated the political minority..... They aimed far lower than any other Congress has ever aimed, and they nailed their target.

The article goes on to detail some of the more outrageous moves by Republicans to silence the Democratic minority. Public hearings held only long enough for a five minute photo op before being gaveled closed. Votes held open long past the established time in order to browbeat or bribe some reluctant holdout. The location of conference meetings to iron out differences between House and Senate versions of a bill never shared with the Democrats.

In one legendary incident, Rep. Charles Rangel went searching for a secret conference being held by Thomas. When he found the room where Republicans closeted themselves, he knocked and knocked on the door, but no one answered. A House aide compares the scene to the famous "Land Shark" skit from Saturday Night Live, with everyone hiding behind the door afraid to make a sound. "Rangel was the land shark, I guess," the aide jokes. But the real punch line came when Thomas finally opened the door. "This meeting," he informed Rangel, "is only open to the coalition of the willing."

And then there was that controversial Patriot Act.

The measure was originally crafted in classic bipartisan fashion in the Judiciary Committee, where it passed by a vote of thirty-six to zero, with famed liberals like Barney Frank and Jerrold Nadler saying aye. But when the bill was sent to the Rules Committee, the Republicans simply chucked the approved bill and replaced it with a new, far more repressive version, apparently written at the direction of then-Attorney General John Ashcroft.

"They just rewrote the whole bill," says Rep. James McGovern, a minority member of the Rules Committee. "All that committee work was just for show."

The Patriot Act was again in the news due to recent firings of U.S. Attorneys General by the Bush administration. Apparently, one of the little presents slipped into the act by Ashcroft was a rule allowing the forced resignation of an attorney, not due to any misconduct. In fact, the firings seemed to have targeted several attorneys, including one from Texas, who were aggressive in their pursuit of corruption. Under a new provision of the Patriot Act, the administration can appoint their own U.S. Attorney General to these vacancies for an indefinite period of time, thereby bypassing the Senate confirmation process. Something tells me Congressman Frank might have had an issue with that.

And what about those "closed rule" debates? Well, every Congress in recent memory has used them, some more than others.

To ensure that Democrats can't alter any of the last-minute changes, Republicans have overseen a monstrous increase in the number of "closed" rules -- bills that go to the floor for a vote without any possibility of amendment. This tactic undercuts the very essence of democracy: In a bicameral system, allowing bills to be debated openly is the only way that the minority can have a real impact, by offering amendments to legislation drafted by the majority.

In 1977, when Democrats held a majority in the House, eighty-five percent of all bills were open to amendment. But by 1994, the last year Democrats ran the House, that number had dropped to thirty percent -- and Republicans were seriously pissed. "You know what the closed rule means," Rep. Lincoln Diaz-Balart of Florida thundered on the House floor. "It means no discussion, no amendments. That is profoundly undemocratic." When Republicans took control of the House, they vowed to throw off the gag rules imposed by Democrats. On opening day of the 104th Congress, then-Rules Committee chairman Gerald Solomon announced his intention to institute free debate on the floor. "Instead of having seventy percent closed rules," he declared, "we are going to have seventy percent open and unrestricted rules."

How has Solomon fared? Of the 111 rules introduced in the first session of this Congress, only twelve were open. Of those, eleven were appropriations bills, which are traditionally open. That left just one open vote -- H. Res. 255, the Federal Deposit Insurance Reform Act of 2005.

In the second session of this Congress? Not a single open rule, outside of appropriation votes. Under the Republicans, amendable bills have been a genuine Washington rarity, the upside-down eight-leafed clover of legislative politics.

So the next time you see Pete Sessions or Joe Barton whining about how unfair it is that the minority party can't offer an amendment on the floor of the house, or some other criticism about the current rules of debate, remember who wrote the playbook.

Area Republicans Vote Against Raising Minimum Wage

It's a little out of sequence, but among the notable bills being debated by Congress this week was passage of a hike in the minimum wage. If you missed it, it might be because this long-overdue Democratic victory was buried behind the controversy over troop surges. The Fort Worth Star Telegram put its announcement in the business section.

Unlike some of the other bills discussed since the start of this session, North Texans voted on this issue along nearly straight party lines.

On a 315-116 roll call Wednesday, the House voted to increase the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour over 26 months.

Voted Yes (in favor of a minimum wage increase)
Chet Edwards, D-Waco
Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas
Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell (Ed. note: the Star-Telegram article wrongly lists Rep. Marchant as voting against the legislation, while the official record has him voting in favor.)

Voted No (in opposition to a minimum wage increase)
Joe Barton, R-Ennis
Michael Burgess, R-Flower Mound
Ralph Hall, R-Rockwall
Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas
Sam Johnson, R-Plano
Pete Sessions, R-Dallas
Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth

The minimum wage has not seen an increase in over nine years. In fact, based on buying power, it is at its lowest in over 50 years. During that same nine years, congress has voted itself $31K in pay increases, three times the yearly wage of someone earning the minimum.

So it may surprise you that your Republican congressmen and women would fail to see the benefit of raising the minimum wage standard. It shouldn't. Republicans not only fail to see the need for a raise, they fail to see the need for a minimum wage at all. Here's the quote from the Texas GOP party platform.

We believe the Minimum Wage Law should be repealed and that wages should be determined by the free market conditions prevalent in each individual market. [page 25, 2006 State Republican Party Platform]

Last year, under pressure from Republicans running in close districts, they voted to couple the minimum wage hike with an $90 billion decrease in the inheritance tax for America's wealthiest families, in what one Democratic congressman called

"the kind of cynical ploy that makes Americans lose faith in their government."

That bill passed the House, with Edwards joining Burgess, Marchant and Sessions in supporting the bill, Johnson, Hensarling and Barton opposed and Granger abstaining. It failed in the Senate.

This year, the rationale was that a minimum wage increase must be coupled, in the same bill, with tax breaks for small businesses.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said "lucky" workers would see their pay rise to $7.25 an hour, but he predicted that many more will have their hours or benefits cut or lose their jobs.

"In America we can either have maximum opportunity or we can have minimum wages. We cannot have both...."

Well, maybe you can. According to a study by a nonpartisan research group...

Some observers contend that because many small businesses are labor intensive and largely employ low-wage workers, they will experience sharp cost increases when the minimum wage is increased, leading them to reduce employment levels. However, this report examined recent state-by-state trends for small businesses employing fewer than 50 workes and found that employment and payrolls in small businesses grew faster in the states with iminimum wages above the federal level than in the remaining states where the $5.15 an hour federal minimum wage prevailed.

This report also found that total job growth was faster in the higher minimum wage states. Faster job growth also occurred in the retail trade sector, the sector of the economy employing the most workes at low wages, in the higher minimum wage states.

The simplest introductory economics prediction that an increase in the minimum wage will result in job loss clearly is not supported by the actual job growth record. Rather, faced with an increase in the minimum wage, small businesses may have benefited from some combination of higher productivity through improved worker retention and savings on recruitment and training. There may also be a "Henry Ford" effect at work: if you pay workers more, they can buy more, boosting the overall economy, especially among small retail businesses.

Here's the roll call vote. To view Congresswoman Johnson's press release on the bill, click here. The bill still needs to pass in the Senate.

house votes in favor of stem cell research; bush likely to veto (again)

According to Friday's issue of Quick, the Democratic-controlled "House of Representatives passed legislation yesterday to lift President Bush's limits on federal embryonic stem-cell research..." The Republican 109th Congress passed similar legislation last year, prompting President Bush to use his first ever veto stamp to block it from becoming law.

With a 253-174 vote, Congress failed to pass the bill with more than two-thirds support, meaning it will be unlikely that Bush's expected veto on the new legislation could be overridden. For what it's worth, you can contact the White House and pledge your support for stem cell research. Perhaps an overwhelming show of support could convince the president to sign the legislation.

How did the North Texas legislation vote on this important issue? Find your legislator on the list below and make sure to write them a letter of either support or condemnation, depending on how they voted.

Voted Yes (in favor of stem cell research)
Joe Barton, R-Ennis
Eddie Bernice Johnson, D-Dallas
Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth

Voted No (in opposition to stem cell research)
Michael Burgess, R-Flower Mound
Ralph Hall, R-Rockwall
Jeb Hensarling, R-Dallas
Sam Johnson, R-Plano
Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell
Pete Sessions, R-Dallas

north texas legislators run for republican leadership positions

According to Capitol Annex, several North Texas Republicans are planning to make a bid for House leadership positions within the party.

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Ennis) is running for Minority Leader. He faces opposition in Rep. John Boehner of Ohio and Rep. Mike Pence of Indiana. Kay Granger (R-Ft. Worth) is running for GOP Conference Vice Chair. Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Dallas) hopes to become the next chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.

House Republicans hold leadership elections on Nov. 17.

stem cell research enhancement act: vetoed

Recently, the Senate passed legislation that would enhance stem cell research by loosening restrictions on federal funding. The legislation passed in the U.S. House back in 2005 without help from several North Texas Republicans that voted against it: Rep. Michael Burgess (Flower Mound), Rep. Ralph Hall (Rockwall), Rep. Jeb Hensarling (Dallas), Rep. Sam Johnson (Plano), Rep. Kenny Marchant (Carrollton), and Rep. Pete Sessions (Dallas). Two North Texas Republicans supported stem cell research and are to be commended: Rep. Kay Granger (Fort Worth) and Rep. Joe Barton (Ennis).

How did the Democrats vote? Totally in favor of stem cell research. Texas Democrats stood in solidarity; not a single one voted against the legislation. If you're represented by a Texas Democrat, take a minute to write them a letter and thank them for supporting stem cell research.

Over in the Senate, our two Republican senators were split. Sen. John Cornyn voted against the stem cell research legislation, while Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison voted for it. Sen. Hutchison is to be commended for standing up and letting her vote be counted to help save lives. Unfortunately, Sen. Cornyn decided to cater to the religious right.

Regardless of how everyone voted, President Bush used the first veto of his presidency today to reject this legislation that was overwhelmingly passed by Congress.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said Wednesday afternoon. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it."

Attending the White House event were a group of families with children who were born from "adopted" frozen embryos that had been left unused at fertility clinics.

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," he said of the children in the audience. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells."

Despite Bush's decision, the issue has divided much of the Republican Party. Only two Texas Republicans (North Texas Reps. Barton and Granger) strayed from Republican talking points to cast their vote in favor of the legislation, but across the nation things were different. In the Senate, many states were split with one senator voting one way and the other voting another. In the House, a coalition of 200 Democrats and Republicans co-sponsored the legislation. Even top Republicans in Congress were forced to publicly disagree with the president.

The Senate bill's principal sponsor, Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pennsylvania, who recently survived a brush with cancer, was joined by Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tennessee, a physician who argued that Bush's policy is too restrictive.

"I am pro-life, but I disagree with the president's decision to veto the Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act," Frist said in a statement. "Given the potential of this research and the limitations of the existing lines eligible for federally funded research, I think additional lines should be made available."

Currently, House Republicans plan to re-introduce the legislation in an attempt to override President Bush's veto. Please help this effort! If your legislator voted against the bill last year, there's a chance that public opinion could change their mind this year. If they supported it last year, make sure you write them to encourage them to cast the same vote to override the veto. Right now, House leadership isn't sure that they'll have enough support for the measure, so this requires immediate action if we want to save lives. Contact your representatives in Congress here.