GOP Speaker Dustin Burrows and his allies found a way to ban Democrats from chairing committees without losing them as allies on Thursday when the House approved its rules for the 2025 regular session over the objections of conservatives who felt like they'd been snookered in a quest to strip power from minority party colleagues.
The House adopted the rules in House Resolution 4 with a 116-23 tally after the new speaker's team defused a push by two dozen conservatives to postpone a vote for several days so members would have time to comb through the 272-page document that they had no chance to see until Thursday morning.
Burrows demonstrated that he was in full control when the House voted 107-35 to deny the proposed delay that would have given conservatives an opportunity during the weekend to fire up grassroots voters who'd been led to believe they would prevail with demands for an all-Republican chairmanship lineup.
Republican State Reps. Nate Schatzline of Fort Worth and Brian Harrison of Midlothian reacted with anger with a video they post on social media to "explain the betrayal of Texas voters that just happened as RINOs joined the Dems to silence conservatives and give the Democrats more power than they’ve ever had in the recent history of the state of Texas!!!
"Every amendment we had to Reform the House was killed by
@Burrows4TX
& his leadership team!" the far right representatives declared on X. "It’s WAR."
Thirty-four Republicans voted to stall the day of reckoning on the rules. State Rep. Ana-Maria Rodriquez Ramos of Dallas was the only Democrat to oppose the motion to "move the previous question" by shutting down debate on HR 4 to clear the way for a final vote. Rodriguez Ramos finished third in the speaker's election last week as the only Democrat who was nominated for the post on the floor.
The GOP members who opposed the fast-track proposal that Republican State Rep. Jared Patterson of Frisco pushed through had all backed State Rep. David Cook of Mansfield in the leadership fight on the floor on the new session's opening day. State Rep. Mike Schofield - a Katy Republican who supported Cook for speaker and voted to kill the Patterson motion - warned House leaders that they were asking for trouble with the parliamentary maneuvering.
Fifty-six Democrats teamed with 51 Republicans in the vote to end the debate on the rules. But 11 Republicans who voted no on the motion ended up voting for the final rules package. Twelve of nearly two dozen Republicans who voted against HR 4 are freshmen legislators. But 14 members of the rookie class sided with the Burrows team in the final count on the rules.
The Burrows Republicans gave the impression for a week that they were on the verge of rolling over in the face of intense pressure from base voters for a ban on Democratic committee chairs. The rules that the speaker's team drafted gave Texas GOP Chairman Abraham George and grassroots activists the Democratic chairmanship prohibition they'd been demanding for months. HR 4 goes a step farther with a ban on Democratic vice-chairs as well.
But the rules give the speaker authority to appoint a dozen new subcommittees that he will control without any restrictions on the party affiliation of their chairs. The standing subcommittees will have most of the same powers and abilities that committees have now.
more to come ...
