Tag Archives: Texas Public Policy Foundation

So What Do We Do Now?

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The courts seem to move slowly. Most of the time that’s not an issue, but we have a court case right now where the timing matters. It will be interesting to see what the next step is. Also, at what point is Congress required to follow the U.S. Constitution and what are the consequences when they don’t?

On Tuesday, Just the News reported:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday secured a major victory in his challenge to the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending package passed in 2022, with a court declaring that the bill was approved unconstitutionally.

President Joe Biden signed the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 in December of the prior year. The measure effectively set the federal budget for the year by wrapping the 12 annual appropriations bills into a single piece of legislation. Paxton, however, had argued that the House’s passage of the measure was unconstitutional as less than half of the lower chamber’s members were physically present to vote on it. Many lawmakers who were not present voted by proxy. Paxton had specifically challenged stipulations in the bill that affect his state.

“Like many constitutional challenges, Texas asserts that this provision is unenforceable against it because Congress violated the Constitution in passing the law. In response, the defendants claim, among other things, that this Court has no power to address the issue because it cannot look to extrinsic evidence to question whether a bill became law,” the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, Lubbock Division wrote. “But because the Court is interpreting and enforcing the Constitution—rather than second-guessing a vote count—the Court disagrees. The Court concludes that, by including members who were indisputably absent in the quorum count, the Act at issue passed in violation of the Constitution’s Quorum Clause.”

So what happens now? Does this matter?

The article concludes:

The Texas Public Policy Foundation served as co-counsel in the case.

“The Court correctly concluded that the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2023 violated the Quorum Clause of the U.S. Constitution because a majority of House members was not physically present when the $1.7 trillion spending bill was passed. Proxy voting is unconstitutional,” TPPF senior attorney Matt Miller said.

Don’t Mess With Texas

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In June 2011 I posted an article (rightwinggranny.com) about the Environmental Protection Agency’s war of Texas.

The article reported:

In January 2010, the EPA decided that the Texas air-permit program was invalid and every facility in the state operating under that permit would have to be re-permitted.  The argument was that Texas was measuring the pollution from the entire facility–the EPA wanted separate measurements from every area of the facility.  Obviously this will be more expensive with very questionable results.  The second aspect of the attack on Texas is the war on coal.  The Texas Public Policy Foundation submitted a report to Congress in March saying that the new EPA regulations will shut down 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity–about one-twelfth of peak demand.  The new regulations also make no allowance for increased energy demands in the State of Texas in the coming years.  The third attack on Texas energy is in the area of natural gas.

That article links to an article at Hot Air that details the entire attack.

Well, the attack has been turned back. Fox News is reporting today that “the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the agency to reconsider the Texas regulations and “limit its review” to ensuring that they meet the “minimal” Clean Air Act requirements that govern state implementation plans.”

 Fox News reports:
 
“If Texas’s regulations satisfy those basic requirements, the EPA must approve them,” the court said in its 22-page ruling this week.

The EPA rejected Texas’ rules on minor new-source review permits in September 2010, saying they didn’t meet Clean Air Act requirements. The Texas attorney general, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and businesses sued the EPA, challenging the ruling.

This is good news. The EPA under President Obama has consistently attacked America’s domestic sources of energy. They are not an elected body and have assumed too much power. It is good to see the court temper that power.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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Why Texas And Rick Perry Are Being Attacked From Many Directions

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"The Honorable Rick Perry (front right), ...

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The establishment Republican party does not want Rick Perry to run against President Obama in 2012–that is illustrated by the recent buzz about Paul Ryan or whether Sarah Palin would run. The Democrat party (and the liberal media) do not want Rick Perry to run–that is illustrated by recent attacks on both Texas and Rick Perry. For example, on August 22, Paul Krugman wrote an article in the New York Times about the low wages in Texas and the fact that job growth should have been better than it was.

He stated:

First, the debate over the alleged Texas miracle is not over whether Texas is in fact a miserable failure. All the critics need to show is that Texas is not in fact the miracle Perry claims. And it isn’t.

Second, defenders of the miracle claims seem remarkably unwilling to confront the key argument. People like me point out that Texas has not, in fact, been immune to the recession. Since there’s a long-term shift of population and jobs to Texas, you’d expect job growth in Texas to be higher than in the rest of the country even in a recession, and the key question is whether that growth has been sufficiently high to keep up with population — and it hasn’t.

Well, the Texas Public Policy Foundation begs to differ. They posted a rebuttal to one of Mr. Krugman’s attacks on the Texas economy. In their rebuttal, they point out:

 It’s a better bet that almost 1.9 million people have fled New York and Massachusetts over the last decade because they couldn’t find a job in those states, and that many of them came to Texas because there were jobs here for them because of our model of gover­nance incorporating low taxes and spending, a predictable, low level of regulation, and a sound civil justice system—with minimal federal interference.

From this perspective, the Texas Miracle is that Texas’ unemployment rate is only 8.2% after a net inflow of 781,542 job seekers and their families have come here looking for work. Not to mention the demand for work created by international migration and normal population growth. While New York’s 8% unemployment rate come after 1.5 million people left the state.

The Texas Model has led to strong economic growth for our state, and it can do the same for the entire country.

What are these attacks about? Under Rick Perry, the State of Texas has instituted tort reform. The state has also recently passed a law that requires the loser in a lawsuit to pay the court costs. Needless to say, this prevents a lot of unnecessary lawsuits and makes less work for lawyers.

These are the three top groups that contributed to the Democrat party in 2010:

 Candidate Committees     $58,923,992

 Retired                               $33,819,391

 Lawyers/Law Firms          $29,914,538

Rick Perry is a threat to both the Republican establishment and the Democrat party. His election would put tort reform nationwide on the table and might even result in a more reasonable court system.

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