Speaker "Straddick"? Republicans Block Insurance Reform

by: Glenn Smith

Tue May 26, 2009 at 00:50 PM CDT

House Speaker Joe Straus and dozens of GOP House members who signed their names to blanket objections which block insurance reform are doing what Republicans do best: serving their masters in the insurance lobby.

When they placed their partisan voter ID bill at the top of the regular calendar -- ahead of the Texas Department of Insurance sunset bill, they hoped to block key insurance reforms. Like the common-sense, pro-consumer amendment that would require Insurance Commission review and approval of insurance rates before companies could assess them.

Of course, if they succeed in passing voter suppression legislation, they'll put into law bureaucratic barriers to the ballot box. They'll have fewer angry voters to overcome because fewer angry voters will be allowed to vote. That's the whole point of the GOP voter ID plan:  put structural barriers into the law that guarantees them power no matter how voters might feel.

Democrats have tried several times to move insurance reform to the top of the calendar. Republicans have said no. But they've made it clear they put their cronies in the insurance industry before the needs of hardworking Texans who now pay the highest insurance rates in the nation.

In this, new Republican House Speaker looks more and more like the man he vanquished, notorious former Speaker Tom Craddick. It's a shame, really. No matter the face in the chair, it's the insurance industry that controls the Republican Party. It's not really a party at all. It's an insurance industry PAC.

The Wages of Sin

by: Glenn Smith

Mon May 25, 2009 at 02:46 PM CDT

Quorum looks at the popularity of insurance reform in a recent poll, and concludes:

[The poll's release is]a message to the Republican signators blocking a suspension of the rules.

Democrats have offered several times to suspend the rules to take up critical policy matters falling beneath Voter I.D. on the calendar. But Voter I.D. is the GOP's top 2009 priority, and they are willing to sacrifice insurance reform and other critical issues to get what they want.

Fifty-nine or 60 of them are on the record in the House journal opposing suspension. (They've filed three such suspension blocking letters. I can only find one online so far in the official House Journal.) Not hard to link that on-the-record block to the failure of insurance reform. Here's the list of GOP members, taken from the House Journal, who are on the record against insurance reform.

The following members gave notice of a standing objection to suspending the regular order of business:

  Isett, F. Brown, Bohac, B. Brown, Anderson, Smithee, Keffer, Truitt, Flynn, Eissler, Fletcher, J. Davis, Berman, Jackson, Hardcastle, Paxton, Cook, Driver, Lewis, Hunter, Jones, Hartnett, Orr, Taylor, Laubenberg, Harper-Brown, D. Miller, Button, Parker, Zerwas, Kolkhorst, Sheffield, Hamilton, W. Smith, Branch, Kleinschmidt, Hancock, Swinford, Madden, Weber, Aycock, S. King, Otto, Creighton, S. Miller, Craddick, Crownover, Geren, Bonnen, Christian, T. Smith, McCall, Shelton, Hughes, P. King, Woolley, Patrick, Darby, and Hilderbran.

UPDATE -- It's also clear this afternoon that the GOP, including Speaker Straus, is today trying to spin a spurious connection between this year's GOP voter suppression bill and a '97 proposal involving ID requirements for voters not on the rolls and without a voter registration card. Straus called it "complete hypocricy" for Dems to oppose this year's proposal if they supported the '97 proposal. This year, of course, the GOP wants additional IDs from voters on the rolls and with a voter registration card. This sort of poor, half-baked opposition research is laughable. The bills are radically different.

UPDATE # 2 -- Here is language from bill analysis of the '97 bill being spun by Republicans as equivalent to this years bill.

Current election law does not allow for a separate ballot box for the affidavit ballot.  Quickly locating ballots voted by affidavit is essential to a smooth-running, non-controversial election.

Get it? The '97 proposal applied to people not on the registration rolls and without registration cards -- and it gives them a way to vote by affidavit. It made it easier to vote. This year's proposal restricts voting even by people on the registration rolls and with a registration card. And under the '97 proposal, a voter not on the rolls and without a registration card could vote just by signing an affidavit.

This is a weak and deceitful argument from Republicans.