<Music> Welcome to Party Politics, where we prepare for your next political conversation.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina at the University of Houston, and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus political science professor, just like this guy at the University of Houston.

And, obviously lots going on.

Like I said last week, we're trying to keep up just like you all are.

There's so much happening, but we're going to break it down at least, and some big categorical stuff and then get into some stuff about Texas.

Lots happening in Texas to the Texas Senate.

Like is just rocketing bills out like some like Elon Musk firing into the sky.

Speaking of Elon Musk, right.

He had a pretty high profile meeting the president along with his little son, X.

Right?

Yeah.

He was adorable.

Yes.

He was.

Yes.

It didn't seem like Trump thought so, though, I don't know.

I mean, I don't know, I because there's a picture where President Trump is looking at him, but I don't know if it's, like a grandfatherly look or like, what are you doing here in my office?

Are you in my office?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

But you know.

Yeah.

Is Trump a president who likes kids or doesn't like kids?

Because we've had presidents who've liked kids.

Yeah.

But obviously, yeah, that's, part of his part of his personality is geographic.

But I don't know, I don't know, I think he likes kids.

I mean, I don't know, but.

Hard to.

Know.

Yeah, it's very hard to know.

We'll see when they do some like Easter egg roll or they do the Halloween parade.

Yeah.

We'll see how much he really likes a lot will be our kind of that kind of moment.

But in actual political news.

There you.

Go.

Which is pretty dramatic as well.

The president has slapped a 25% tariff on steel imports and aluminum imports.

This is something that he's done before 2018.

The similar tariffs put on to a lot of these goods.

Now some trading partners have negotiated a little carve out that may still happen for some because we've seen the president do this before.

But you made this great point last week or two weeks ago that was like the president basically using trade policy as a way to kind of sort of solve all the nation's economic ills.

It's not clear it's going to work in this case, but he wants to basically jumpstart domestic manufacturing.

Correct.

The problem is the domestic manufacturing at this point is only about 70% on things like aluminum.

So the country needs those imports to be able to keep prices low.

As somebody who is going to buy a car soon and who loves beer, the aluminum price increases like really worrisome.

So is this going to have an effect like it might on me to increase prices and have a kind of ripple effect?

On inflation?

Absolutely.

100%.

And the issue here is, is boosting domestic production is not a bad idea.

Yes, indeed.

The US economy is very much dependent upon, a lot of imports, especially when you're thinking about raw materials.

But the issue here is that you don't have the capital infrastructure in place to take or to replace, or to basically have the supply and demand meet.

So if you want to do, for example, a aluminum plant or, you know, have, steel or whatnot, there is no capacity.

Most of the plans that were, for example, in the mid was closed years and years ago.

Yeah.

And it's like this isn't necessarily just kind of prime now to have those jobs come back, maybe in the long run it'll work.

I think the other long term play that is risky is that he wants to blow up NAFTA.

I think that he thinks that this is a process where if they make it so challenging to trade with the U.S that the NAFTA partners like Mexico and Canada will just kind of say, let's renegotiate and figure out how we're all going to work together on this.

That's also a risky strategy because so much of the imports are connected to the sort of prices that people are used to paying, and if that increases, it could be a real issue.

I mean, think about this.

I mean, the inflation report came out like literally this week that said that inflation is higher than it was.

That's a major problem.

So, I mean, the whole premise of Trump's argument, well, one of the premises of his argument in the election was, I'm going to bring down prices like on day one.

Well, prices are still going up and sort of consumer sentiment is going down.

That's a challenge for him in terms of sort of seeking reelection.

And it's on on stuff that we buy every single day.

Yeah, groceries show.

Oh, that's just me.

That's you.

I know you do too.

Oh yeah.

Sometimes that's beer and use cars.

Right.

So then it becomes a real problem for, the Trump administration to deliver on that in a manner that people are going to feel it.

And the, campaign promises are still very, very fresh.

And again, when you go to the supermarket every week, it's like, wait, what?

Yeah, we're tracking that and you can see the kind of.

Yeah, I just.

Came up.

Yeah.

15% still bad.

Yeah.

And I think that's going to catch up to him.

So, yeah, there's still a kind of grace period here.

And there's a lot of literature and scholarship on the honeymoon period.

Mostly people have found recently that it's like, not as long as it used to be.

Like to like, maybe it'd be like days.

But I think the Trump has had a bit of a halo here.

Right?

There's a bit of a kind of domestic kind of bump for him, but and his numbers are still okay.

But I think that could change very quickly if people really sort of see that the pinch is still here.

Another way this could happen is that, you know, we're seeing another campaign promise come out and that's that.

He is sick to Doge on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Yeah, basically the the CFP, which is a mouthful, was created after the 2008 financial crisis.

It was designed to basically protect consumers from kind of predatory practices from companies.

The agency has collected multiple billions, $21 billion.

It says, on like banks and creditors who have maybe sort of violated laws.

Right.

Sort of been kind of financially unkind to people.

They've engaged in a bunch of civil penalties for these companies that have violated customers rights.

They do a lot of things like limiting overdraft fees, limiting credit card late fees, removing medical debt from credit card, from credit reports.

They go after banks who hurt people.

Correct me if I'm wrong.

Good.

This sounds like the kind of thing that Trump promised to do, right?

Yeah.

So what do you make of this sort of approach?

The DOJ's just taking here to say, let's just kind of shutter this whole organization.

What's going on?

Well, I have no idea.

Yeah.

I mean, it's one of those on, I guess, on not really transparent decisions.

Don't.

And Elon Musk has me.

Yeah.

He's like you, you need to check our X like slash Twitter to see what's going on and like exactly.

Okay.

And this comes when Elon Musk just struck a deal with visa.

To start a major partner payment company through eggs.

Okay.

And remember that Elon Musk's, idea is that X is going to be an everything.

Not everything app.

Okay.

Right.

So, you know, it's like, well, probably you don't one the CFP.

Yeah.

Breathing down your name around.

Yeah.

When you're going to do these things I don't know that he's, he's, he's, he's, he's you know, I mean, the fact that they have struck a deal, that's a fact.

Yes.

So but why is the question that's a great point.

And actually, I mean, the Democrats have been saying, like, there is this kind of serious conflict here and whether it's something you know about or like, I'm just learning about this, then there's this sort of problem that is, lack of transparency.

But this isn't something I think that was a surprise.

Like Republicans have been coming after this production.

Be sure, a long time.

This has been litigated a bunch of times.

In fact, there's actually a Supreme Court case that, like, ultimately was decided in favor of the executive that said that the president can remove the head of the bureau without cause, whereas before it was written, there had to be only cost.

So incent, in the sense of the sort of agency or sort of quasi agency is kind of already part of Trump's kind of master plan.

But it's also the case that this was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren, who before she was in the Senate, kind of came up with this and was put into place by Barack Obama.

So that's two strikes.

Yeah, right.

But I mean, it seems to me that this is an agency that doesn't have like a huge constituency, and Republicans have been gaming for the demise of it for a long time.

I do think that this is something that could come back to hurt them, though, right?

This is something that theory protects people.

And if people feel like they're being taken advantage of, there's now is no one to help, then it could be a potential problem.

Well, absolutely.

And and it's not because you're talking about, you know, water quality of the number of million particles, blah, blah, blah, that people is like, wait, what are you glazing?

Yeah.

These is people's money.

And this is your credit card.

Yeah.

So if suddenly you're paying, I don't know, 7% interest.

And the next thing you get an email like, hey, guess what?

Yeah.

It's 17%.

Yeah, it's 17% now.

Why?

Because we say so.

Yeah, yeah.

What do you do?

Yeah.

You don't have no recourse whatsoever.

That's a great point.

Yeah.

So so it's it's these policies once again inflation laws, these attack on the CFB.

Yeah has implications for bread and butter issues.

Yeah.

And people will notice if there is a dramatic change in the sense of yeah that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And and the bottom line.

Right.

Exactly.

Let's talk about other personnel issues.

And that is that, the vice president, Vance is, I guess not the considered successor to President Trump on Fox News with an interview with Brett Bear.

Bear asked directly what the president's plans were for the vice president, whether he saw Vance as a successor.

And Trump said flatly, no, like both.

Full stop.

But yeah.

He's very capable.

Yeah, yeah, that's what he said.

This reminds me of.

And I show this to my students.

There's a, a great ad from 1960 that the Kennedy campaign used that did asked in a press conference Eisenhower what Nixon had done as vice president that would justify him taking over.

And Eisenhower stopped for a second and had the think and said, well, if you give me a week, I might think of one, I don't know, like quote, like verbatim.

And, that's not good.

Right?

So Kennedy uses this as like a campaign kind of tactic against Nixon.

I don't know if that was the difference maker.

But obviously he wins.

I so I can say for sure we're going to see this come back.

But the thing is that Vance has been a pretty loyal deputy here.

I mean, most vice presidents spend their time kind of attacking, right?

That's kind of what they do.

But, now in office, usually they don't do as much.

But he's been doing a lot like, he's fought with Representative Connor about this individual who was fired, from those who had made some racist comments on a different, website.

He had, effectively gone to battle for President Trump saying that the federal judge ruled against the executive, then they should ignore it.

He made some weird comments during the Puppy Bowl.

And if you see this thing that he said that he was concerned about, the Chihuahua German Shepherd mix, it was in the Puppy Bowl.

Oh.

Like question in the Parenthood.

Like, how did that work?

Oh, as the parents of a mixed dog, I was offended.

Yeah.

But, like, that's, an interesting kind of dynamic where he's been pretty loyal.

Now he's abroad doing an A.I.

summit So that's, something vice presidents do.

And, there's a risk there, too, right?

Like they kept Vice President Harris pretty close because the margins were really tight in the Senate, so they haven't needed him to come in an emergency except one time to do a tie breaker, but they might.

So he's really important basically is what I'm saying to the.

Oh, absolutely.

And obviously this is not the first time, you know, President Obama, the first time that Joe Biden wanted to run, Obama said like, no, let's give Hillary Clinton a chance.

So he was like, not peaked.

But again, it is important.

But also, on the other hand, I understand President Trump because if you pick the, royal hair to the throne.

Yeah.

This early, right?

Yeah.

You lose.

That's a good point.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

You become a lame duck president.

Yeah.

Starting the moment that you say.

Yeah, yeah.

This is going to be the hair of the MAGA movement.

And Trump loves to and I think also needs to be the leader of this still that things will look after.

We're going to have to deal with when we get to that point.

I hate to bring up the fact that we're going to have 2028 before you know it.

But 2026 is, you know, a year.

That's so close to close.

But yeah, like it's coming.

And so, yeah, they're going to have to grapple with kind of what the Republican Party looks like post-Trump.

Let's talk about Texas.

And actually this is a merge of things that are happening in Texas and things that are happening in DC, and that's that.

Governor Abbott went to the White House and basically hand out said, can we have $11 billion, please?

We've been spending all this money on border security.

We'd like to have some of that back.

Is it going to work?

Well it might, yeah.

In my not.

Like they're going to get some of it or none of.

It I don't know.

I mean, you.

Can get it like a voucher for like, you know, we owe you one.

You can eat in the, like the right Senate mess.

Or like.

The Navy bean soup you need when.

You want to return something at a store and you don't have a receipt, they say, okay, I'll give you store credit.

So maybe that Store credit?

Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, it's, it's I think it's a good strategy.

From Governor Abbott, if he can get the money back, you know, welcome.

And hopefully that money is going to be spent on water infrastructure or something else that, is important to spend.

Just put the 11 billion right into the water infrastructure.

Yeah.

And during that period, and I'm sorry, it is.

I mean, we'll talk about tax cuts in a second, but that's a lot of tax cuts.

It is a lot of tax cuts.

But I think that eventually we'll see.

I mean if he makes the argument okay we have to save these much trillions of dollars.

Like, Elon Musk is saying that we can cut the federal deficit by half.

That is yeah, 1 trillion.

Yeah.

Okay.

That can't be given away like billions of dollars because, I mean, Texas wants.

Sure.

I mean.

Every state's going to come in and say like, hey, we did this to we need some money as well.

Like we're spending money on fighting fires and disaster relief, like we need help.

Yeah, yeah.

Everyone's going to come showing up with their their hands extended.

So, yeah, I don't know.

And the question is it's a relationship question.

Right.

And so John Cornyn has said like I'm backing this, I'm gonna try to push this bill through.

And that's obviously useful.

And the other question is sort of whether the clout of Texas elected officials is sufficient.

Jody Arrington is the budget chair.

That's a pretty powerful position.

But he's been knocked around a little bit, actually, like his proposals for the budget really aren't in line with what Trump wants, at least like as of this recording.

So that's going to maintain some negotiation.

Ted Cruz is really rising up the ranks, right?

He's the head of a pretty powerful Commerce committee.

So there's a chance that maybe they can leverage some of this into some success for Trump.

But I don't know.

The other thing I don't know is that the Dallas Morning News made it clear case, an editorial that said that they should check the receipts, look to see what Operation Lone Star really did.

And there were concerns from last year, the year before the Texas Tribune did a really deep analysis that looked at what it actually spent money on, what Operation Lone Star spent money on.

There were concerns about the seizure of certain amounts of fentanyl attributable to border security increases or, oh, yeah, of criminal charges that were filed.

There's a sort of sense that maybe that wasn't just sort of what Texas was spending that was leading to these changes.

So I think that that's one issue to the president.

Trump is going to say, okay, I appreciate the offer.

You know, and I'd like to give it to you, but like, I need to make sure that we're actually, you know, going to pay for what we get.

I mean, that that would be in line with DOGE's you know, mandate.

Right?

Yeah.

We're going to look at the receipts and we're going to see if you actually purchase this thing and show me the thing, show me the details.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's another issue that well, so I'm actually skeptical.

It'll happen.

But maybe like some general credit would be good.

And maybe it's the case of not so much that they like we're going to get like pay dollar for dollar back, but they're going to say hey, we need X, Y and Z at the border.

And the feds will pay for it instead of taxes.

So it's like they can reduce the amount of money, but they're still going to spend about 6 billion according to.

Oh yeah, two reasons we.

Talked about Abbott's budget.

So like they're still spending a healthy amount of money.

Yeah I don't know how that's going to play out.

Speaking of money, let's talk about something I know you like.

And that's betting gambling, sports, gambling.

You're like, I hate gambling because as it said, many times in this space, I do not understand that you can't.

The up and down or what is it?

No.

Blackjack?

No.

Over and under or under?

Yeah, yeah.

I have no idea what.

You're the perfect person to gamble because that's the modal outcome of most gamblers.

Because that's what the companies want, right?

I don't want to take a position on whether gambling should or should not happen in Texas.

I don't gamble much and I know you don't gamble much, so maybe that gives you a sense of kind of where we are on this.

But Greg Abbott has said I'm in favor of this or maybe not opposed to it.

This is actually a change from where he was, where he said in 2015 that you know, he was going to try to sort of limit what the investigation was like.

The Texas Lottery Commission was going to look into sports betting expansion, and he said, no, don't do that.

And so he was in favor of those current, limitations, but now he's changing his tune, saying, you know, I'd be surprised if people weren't doing it.

We should ultimately just do this.

Right.

And he's talking about online sports betting.

Yeah.

Online sports betting.

Right.

So, yeah, absolutely.

And if he represents a revenue for the state.

Yeah.

You know.

That's the issue.

It's well, okay.

So I don't know.

Here's the problem.

And that has been that the people who have looked at this and have done these studies have suggested basically that gambling is a problem.

And it's a problem for people mostly, also sort of low income people and for males who lose a lot of money.

I assume you did a study that found tracking 700,000 sports betters, that less than 5% drew any profit, and the people who were the biggest losers, like the 3% who were the biggest losers, accounted for like half of all the revenue.

Wow.

It also increases, bankruptcies and, decreases household savings.

So they're real ramifications.

And I don't know if this is why Dan Patrick against it, but Dan Patrick is like the biggest casino boss in the state.

He does not want this to happen, but he has said that if there's votes, then he'll pursue it.

But he's indicated that's not the case right now.

Is this going to pass in any kind of form?

I don't know, I mean, all the big franchises in the state, the Dallas Cowboys, the Astros, the Spurs, etc., etc.

I pushing for these, right?

Right.

There is a lot of, lobbyist.

Yeah.

Liberty right in, in the Texas legislature.

And it's just, a matter of, to see if there is a vote.

But again, I think Lieutenant Governor Patrick has a very important saying in terms of if we have the votes, then we'll push.

But yeah.

Right.

His position is if we have the votes, like, I'm not going to do anything.

Yeah.

And if.

I say no, but I'm.

Not going to say no, but I'm not going to say yes either.

Yeah.

So which for Patrick is a no.

And I think that's definitely something that they have to consider.

But like you said, the gambling issue can't raise revenue.

Now, the New York Times did a big story last year that basically found that most states who, like, legalized some form of gaming had hoped that it would reduce the budget deficit or be able to have them pay for something.

And it didn't like the amount of money that actually raised was pretty low.

So I think lawmakers have to make sure that they're going to get the money that they say they're going to, because there are these kind of fixed cent, there are these kind of fixed, sort of, financial issues that have to that are going to have to address and they need some kind of long term revenue source.

So it could be that.

But like you say, money talks in the ledge and it could take a couple sessions for this to really happen.

But yeah, the sans, organization has gone from having 19 lobbyist four years ago to having over 100 this session.

So that's a lot.

Of lobbying tension.

A lot of lobbyist.

Yeah.

So I'm I my sense is basically like it's not so much a matter of if but when like it will happen.

And I don't know the form exactly or like exactly when, but I think this is something that Texas is going to do.

They're tired of seeing the money go to other states.

They're trying seeing people gamble in Texas, not get a taste of it.

So the money is something that they are wildly attracted to.

And it's the same argument that you would make with legalization of marijuana, for instance.

Right?

So, I don't know.

I mean, listen, in, in, in the case of legalizing marijuana, when you look at all these days, when you look at Colorado, do you see.

Well, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there is a profit there, right?

The state earned some tax money that could be channeled through some other stuff.

Yeah.

And I think that this is important because over the overall scheme of things, you know, looking at it from a 30,000, foot view, you know, what I think is that I think the governor and the legislature are worries in terms of, okay, we have to diversify our.

Portfolio, for sure.

So it's what are their sources of revenue?

Yeah, we can tap into while we're decreasing these other sources of revenue, a.k.a.

property taxes for instance.

Dot dot dot.

Yes.

Because property taxes are going to be pretty expensive going into the future.

So yeah.

Some other big news this week was that the Texas Senate passed two bills that effectively are going to help to reduce people's property tax burden.

One bill, is a $3.5 billion, basically pay for local governments to be able to compress the rate of taxation.

So people are going to get a bit of a break that should be about $130 per household.

The other is that the are asking the voters to approve of an increase in the homestead exemption, 140,000, in 2023 remain.

Remember, we voted to increase that, $100,000, that provided a pretty serious amount of, of savings, about 700 hours for most people.

This additional increase is probably going to be a $300.

So tax in so that tax decreases are likely to come, but at a very high cost rate.

If you look at the numbers, the payment of the last tax cuts that they have done is about $30 billion.

If you add the new ones and it's going to be in perpetuity, basically about 50 to $55 billion, that is about 15 to 16% of the entire state budget.

And it's going to be something that they're on the hook for forever, or they're going to have to roll that back, which, as you can imagine, would not be very popular.

Right.

And, and and here's the thing is how can we so you can increase or find those, let's say $50 billion right in, in other places, legalizing recreational use of marijuana, potentially gambling.

But the other one that is extremely important is as you can see, the US census has reported that a lot of people are moving to Texas right, opening businesses, this and that, etc., etc.

but in order for them to generate income, right, you need to have reliable infrastructure.

You need to have a solid power grid.

Must!

And then you need to have water.

Right.

And on the other hand you can start, for example, changing some of the issues regarding for example, how do you build and from for example, industrial park sites.

Yeah.

Right.

And when you compare with other countries, for example, in certain countries, you can be, an industrial park in, you know, with permits, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, let's say 18 months.

And here it might take four years.

Yeah.

So you need to have an overall strategy.

A long term plan, a.

Long term plan to bring investment to bring jobs, etc., etc..

But then on the other hand, hey, if you open the tap water, like what is going to come out, we still need that right turn on the lights.

And that kind of stops.

Yeah, I totally know.

I, I think that makes total sense.

The problem for Republicans is that like on that issue is that we talked about this last week, that the kind of growth in Texas is sort of flat, right property tax elections, this sort of exemption tax or the business margins tax is sort of, flat.

Natural gas taxes are sort of flat to, to negative.

So things are not like popping in Texas right now.

The growth isn't terrible.

The fed in Dallas reported basically that they'd expect about 2% growth and it was 1.7.

So like, we're not in dire straits by any means, but it's slower than expected.

And the worry is that that continues.

If that continues and they don't get the property tax money to be able to kind of continue to pay for these cuts, then it's going to be a serious financial pinch in the future.

The other is that Republicans are running out of ways to cut taxes, right.

It's still so unpopular.

And people are like still yelping about their property taxes, even though, like, this is a pretty big chunk.

I mean, no matter how you slice, it's a lot of money.

But the problem is you've got the layered system, right.

You've got appraisal caps at the local level, you've got limitations on the rate change at the local level.

You've got elections for local, you know, appraisal districts.

And now Governor Abbott says two thirds approval to increase any kind of taxes.

It's just becoming this whac-a-mole game where it's like one issue comes up and sort of creates a problem for taxation.

You write down and you try to pop down another one when it pops up.

So it's a problem that they're going to confront.

Will the House agree?

Now this of course is just the Senate's objective, right?

Right.

The Senate is, not surprisingly, even quick on this Dan Patrick objective.

What do you think the House is going to do?

Well, well, well, first, what I checked last night, if we had committee chairs, we don't have committee chair.

See waiting.

Yeah.

So, I mean, I don't know if the House is going to do.

It's more, it has more politically diverse members.

It has a lot of rules.

Yeah.

Because you have more members, more members, more rules.

Right.

So it has more ways for potential legislation to fall into the cracks.

And people like Representative Harrison, who represents that sign, are looking at the kind of what the House is doing.

And they're saying, why are we spending our time on resolutions about beyond say, right, but they can't.

Yeah.

Like there are constitutional limits in terms of what they can do.

It's a big place.

They have so many people to accommodate from the committee, so they're going to move slower.

And that's going to be an issue also.

Well, absolutely.

But that's going to be something that we're going to start reviewing next week.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rotttinghaus the conversation keeps up next week.

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