Dan Patrick Takes Safest Path with Pitch
to Have Senate Send Voucher Bill to Gov
Capitol Inside
April 18, 2025
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick revealed on Friday that he won't be rolling the dice on a milestone school vouchers measure in a bid to make it stronger with a decision to have the Texas Senate rubber-stamp changes that were made in the House in a move that would eliminate the chance for a meltdown.
Patrick announced in a social media post that he'd discussed the strategy with Republican Senator Brandon Creighton as the author of the school choice plan in the state Senate.
"I’ve fought for school choice for my entire legislative career," Patrick said on X. "Now, in consultation with @CreightonForTX, I am recommending the Senate concur with Senate Bill 2, the largest school choice launch in American history."
The Senate's Republicans could reject the lieutenant governor's advice and vote to send SB 2 to a conference committee to iron out differences between the vouchers proposal that the House approved on Thursday and the original cleared the upper chamber on February 5.
While the House added some restrictions and scaled back the price tag for the state's debut school choice program by a small amount, Patrick didn't want to risk a potential train wreck in an attempt to produce a compromise. The controversial proposal is loaded with potential land mines and could have had a 50-50 chance of failing in a conference committee standoff on sticking points.
A Senate vote to embrace the House alterations would send the vouchers bill to Governor Greg Abbott's desk where he expects to sign it immediately.
The measure would calls for spending $1 billion in taxpayer funds from the general revenue account on private school subsidies during the next two years. The cost would soar to $6 billion during the following biennium.
SB 2 will put the state in the business of regulating private education in Texas for the first time. Republican Rep. Brad Buckley of Salado acknowledged during grilling from Democrats as the House sponsor that the bill would make it possible for the richest people in Texas to participate in the program.
Moderate Republicans who dropped their opposition to the plan say they were promised that the legislation would have a permanent cap that limits voucher payments to wealthy Texans to 20 percent of the program's total funding.
The House GOP converts said that Buckley agreed to have provisions in the final product that would mandate audits of the program and private contractors that the state pays to run it along with other restrictions that prompted them to quit their fight to stop the bill.
Two Republicans - former Speaker Dade Phelan and Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston - were the only members of the majority party to cast votes against the vouchers bill in the House this week.
more to come ...
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