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Conservatives didn’t just talk about health-care reform during the 2021 Texas legislative session, they got something done, according to an analyst with the Texas Public Policy Foundation.
“The real unsung hero in this session, which is not super-sexy and didn't get a lot of media time, really was our effort on health care together,” TPPF Chief Communications Officer Brian Phillips said during a foundation event on June 8.
The legislature passed bills, with bipartisan support, that will permit organizations such as The Farm Bureau, Texas Mutual, and Association Health plans to offer health benefit packages to Texans. This should reduce health-care costs that have risen in the last decade.
The legislature also rejected Medicaid expansion, with opponents explaining it is an ineffective and expensive program. Better options exist, Phillips said, adding that conservatives are proving that.
“This is the first time, and I’ve been in the conservative movement for two decades, that I’ve ever seen the conservative movement of any kind, whether local, state or national, actually be very aggressive and on offense when it came to health-care reforms,” he said. “Most of the time we were just trying to repeal Obamacare for the last decade unsuccessfully. Even before that, it was always really a left-of-center issue and we always talked about free market, whatever the heck that means, in terms of health care. We can't beat something with nothing."
Phillips explained his views during the kickoff to TPPF’s first State of the Taxpayer Tour, sponsored by the Lone Star Legacy Society.
Texas Public Policy Foundation Vice President of National Initiatives Chuck DeVore served as the master of ceremonies for the event, held at the TPPF Theater in Austin. Phillips spoke along with Derek Cohen, Texas Public Policy Foundation’s vice president of policy.
Phillips said conservatives worked well together to get bills passed and signed.
“This was an absolute team effort on the part of conservatives across the state," he said.
He said in addition to health care, conservatives found success on education issues, police funding and the state budget.
“We were very disciplined and said, ‘No, we need to do the right thing and not touch the rainy day fund,’” Phillips said. “The fact that we got it under budget, didn't touch the rainy day fund, all those things were a result in part of being very, very disciplined on our messaging.”
Phillips said it is remarkable considering no one could have foreseen the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the civil unrest that roiled the nation in summer 2020, followed by February’s “Snowmageddon” caused by Winter Storm Uri.
“And yet, Texas was able to go through all of that, turn on a dime and really respond to the pandemic — both the economic and the health challenges,” Phillips said.
He added there was progress on energy issues, reducing human trafficking and workforce development, not a topic traditionally seen as a conservative issue.
“We were very aggressive, we had a lot of really good reforms and ideas in terms of developing the workforce to make sure that, yes, we can give people a hand up but we were very strategic in the way that we went about that,” he said.
Phillips said the ugliest part of the session were allegations from liberals that voter-reform bills were racist efforts to suppress voter turnout. It also occurred in Georgia, North Carolina and other states.
“It is incredibly important that we get these reforms in place to protect our elections, to protect our voices, to stop the fraud that's going on around the state,” Phillips said. “So we can't let up at all and it felt like we did that a little bit toward the end.”
Cohen reviewed “the good, the bad and the ugly” of the 2021 session. He said he has resisted grading the session, but would consider it an “incomplete,” matching the assessment of TPPF CEO Kevin Roberts.
Bail reform, getting education bills passed and signed, and ending taxpayer-funded lobbying, often for tax increases and other policies that citizens don’t support, remain on the table.
“There still is work to be done and time still left to do it, but that being said, for conservative policy there were many, many, many wins that I do not want to get lost in the shuffle,” Cohen said.
He said a very conservative budget was passed, much to his pleasure and surprise.
“The fact that we're actually coming in with proper fiscal management is something to praise,” Cohen said. “They’ve actually enacted a statutory spending cap as well. We have a constitutional spending limit but now we actually have a much more fleshed-out statutory one, which is a big, big deal.”
The panelists were asked about riots last summer and were there any policies under review to address security for such events in the future.
Cohen said there were discussions on holding prosecutors — mostly district attorneys — who won’t press charges against rioters liable for their actions, or non-actions. But he said there are jurisdictional issues in Texas that make this difficult to achieve.
DeVore said the foundation continues to oppose much of the taxpayer-funded lobbying in Austin.
“This is something that has been going on in Texas for a long time,” he said, despite the fact that 91% of Texans oppose it.
Professional lobbyists are paid by government entities to lobby lawmakers and state officials. These lobbyists frequently have other clients, including labor unions and multinational corporations, he said, and are highly influential.
“They control enormous sums of money in terms of money to go to campaigns to help elect people or defeat people,” DeVore said. “And because of their power they have amazing access. They can get right in front of lawmakers and tell them, ‘Hey, you know that effort to limit the increase in property taxpayers, we don’t like that. We would hope you would vote against that.'”
The panelists said they were pleased the legislature moved to end Chapter 313 in the state tax code, which critics on the left and right see as corporate welfare for large companies at the expense of local school districts. The program will expire Dec. 31, 2022.
The failure to pass a major election-integrity bill was the chief disappointment during the session, the panelists said.
“This election omnibus, the key thing it would have done is require a degree of voter ID for mail-in ballots,” DeVore said. “Texas is one of the many states that requires voter identification when you go to vote in person. That’s a wonderful anti-fraud measure, make sure that people are who they say they are and you don’t have individuals voting on behalf of others.”
He said voter integrity and mail-in voting remains a concern and must be addressed during upcoming special session or sessions.