A quick look at the just completed legislative session

Failures:

• A bill that would have provided health insurance to 80,000 Texas children died because of political gamesmanship.
• No action was taken to lower utility rates.
• Texas homeowners pay the highest insurance premiums in the country and nothing was done to change that fact.
• The failure to kill the Trans Texas Corridor.
• The failure to place caps on skyrocketing tuitions at Texas universities, a failure that particularly hurts middle income families.
• The refusal to accept $500 million in federal dollars to help unemployed Texans. Now that money must be raised by raising taxes on Texas businesses. Everyone loses in this scenario.

Successes:

• Federal stimulus funds allowed the Lege to craft a pass a budget that did not cut state services and, in the words of many legislators, contained "a little something for everyone."
• Voter ID, a bill that would have disenfranchised thousands of Texans, died.
• With the help of a major lobbying effort by college students who opposed the measure, a bill allowing the carrying of handguns on college campuses never even made it to the House floor for a vote.
• With the help of federal stimulus funds, the Lege passed decent school finance legislation that guaranteed teachers a minimum $800 pay hike.