Thursday, May 2, 2013

Only if you believe good government = more government does this make sense.

The Texas Tribune, continuing their drive to get Texans to pay Carol Alvarado a living wage, raises a question today:

Do Over votes in Texas Legislature raise questions. Aman Batheja, Texas Tribune

The Texas Legislature took three high-profile mulligans last month. Twice in the House and once in the Senate, a majority of lawmakers voted one way on a bill or amendment, only to quickly turn around and vote the other way.

The incidents raise a troubling question: Are lawmakers regularly voting on legislation they don't understand?

The underlying theme is that, due to the Lege's part-time status, our elected representatives are running around willy-nilly casting votes on bills they haven't read, nor do they fully understand.  The obvious answer to this is to greatly expand the Texas government, pay them a competitive salary obviously, and expand them to full-time status.

All of the arguments for expansion (ethics, uninformed votes etc.) lose water when you realize that the US Congress IS full time and they are often worse than the part-time Texas congress in all of these areas.

Sure, it's tough for a news-ish political site to fill the required inches of column space given that the lege is only in session for 3-4 months every two years, but their desire to have more to opine on is a terrible reason to increase Texas government spending by Billions.

No comments:

Sports Section