Change is Good - or Not

The New York Times ran a story recently on the takeover of the speakership of the Texas House by moderate Republicans. "When the Republicans nearly lost their majority in the Texas House in November, a small group of moderates from the party joined with Democrats to oust the archconservative speaker, Thomas Craddick of Midland." The article also reported that Staus, the new speaker, "voted against banning gay men and lesbians from serving as foster parents and against a ban on late-term abortions. (His wife, Julie Brink Straus, was on the board of Planned Parenthood in the early 1990s.)"

This election of Joe Straus as the new speaker of the Texas House has already brought about change. This week the House adopted new rules that included many modifications. One pundit said, "...house rules look more similar to the way the House operated under Speaker Pete Laney than under Tom Craddick. Seniority slots are back on appropriations; there are fewer committees and more powerful chairmen. It's more difficult to use a bill analysis as a basis for a point of order." Soon the new speaker will appoint members of the House to committees and committee chairmen who will a great deal of power over bills in their committees. In fact, the speaker also has the authority to assign bills to a committee. Some of these changes could be good and some bad depending on what the new assignments look like.

In spite of all this change, we should note that Representative Joe Straus voted in favor of issues supported by home schoolers in the last session when he had the opportunity.

Legislators that support things we oppose sometimes also support things we favor. As a example Representative Richard Raymond, the author of HB 316 which seeks to lower the compulsory attendance age to five (which we oppose), has also filed HB 319 which would amend the law allowing exemptions from jury duty for those who would have to leave a child under the age of ten. HB 319 would change that age to 15. This would obviously be a good thing for home school parents, and we support this legislation.

So, the point is that change can be good or it can be bad. We will support change that is good and that we agree with, and we will oppose change that would be detrimental to parents and home schoolers in Texas. It remains to be seen as to the make-up of House committees and whether or not the more powerful chairmen of these committees will be responsive to the home school parents of Texas. Until that becomes more clear, we should follow Oliver Cromwell's exhortation to "trust in God but keep your powder dry."