Gov Celebrates Prematurely on Vouchers
Based on Stacked House Committee Tally
Capitol Inside
April 4, 2025
Governor Greg Abbott couldn't wait to pop the cork on Thursday when he dished out accolades on top of gratitude to legislative leaders and sponsors after a Texas House panel approved a Senate measure that would give the state its first-ever private school vouchers program.
Abbott praised the Public Education Committee's members for moving "universal school choice one step closer to reaching my desk" with a vote for a revised version of the original proposal in Senate Bill 2. The governor expressed thanks to a quartet of Republicans in Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dustin Burrows along with State Rep. Brad Buckley and State Senator Brandon Creighton as Senate Bill 2's chief authors.
Abbott took the tentative victory lap on social media in a statement that made it would like the school choice plan's eventual success would be a mere formality after the committee vote. "This achievement was truly a team effort,"
Abbott said in the remarks that he post on X. "I look forward to its swift passage in the Texas House and signing this bill into law."
Abbott could have been trying to create the appearance of momentum with a strategy that made the voucher bill's approval look like a foregone conclusion. But the leader of the nation's second largest state could be setting himself up for embarrassment by reading too much into an easily predictable outcome for a modified SB 2 at the committee level in the Texas Capitol's west wing.
Burrows for starters appointed six Democrats to the Public Education Committee along with nine Republicans who've been all in on the governor's school choice proposal from the start. The speaker declined to name any of the established or potential voucher foes from the GOP to the education panel. So Burrows knew SB 2 would clear the committee on 9-6 party line vote as long as all of its members were at the meeting that Buckley led as the panel chair and House sponsor.
House officials may have created new cause for suspicion when the Public Education Committee conducted the vote on vouchers in a fashion that was not available to the public on livestream like most if not all of the other House panel meetings that day. Buckley said video access wasn't required because the gathering wasn't an official hearing.
But the House committee vote on a substitute for SB 2 is a meaningless gauge of the measure's prospects in a chamber where Republicans have tried and failed repeatedly to pass a vouchers bill during 22 years of GOP rule. Some House Republicans are admitting in private conversations that the school choice measure faces a more uncertain future on the floor than the governor seems to realize based on his words.
The full House's approval would be no guarantee that the plan could survive a conference committee where it would have immense potential to unravel as a consequence of the legislation's controversial and complicated nature, adverse effects on school districts and stiff resistance in rural areas.
The Public Education Committee all but ensured that SB 2 will go to conference with changes that could make it even less appealing to grassroots conservatives by capping annual expenditures on private school subsidies from the state at $1 billion for the next four years. The price tag of SB 2 - without the House panel revisions - would have mushroomed close to $5 billion after that span of time.
House members could have a field day on the floor with amendments that could water down the vouchers measure even more. Every alteration increases the possibility of a conference committee meltdown on the issue that's been a source for unprecedented failure for the GOP majority in Austin over the course of the last two decades.
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