Welcome to Party Politics.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina, a professor of political science at the University of Houston.

And I'm Brandon Rottinghaus, also a political science professor here at the University of Houston.

Thanks for joining us and talking some politics on a pretty interesting week.

A lot of things happening, right?

Some train wrecks, both political and otherwise, literally.

So certainly some things to talk about.

The first thing up, though, is a kind of reoccurring event.

We'll say that is a kind of stress test on democratic values.

This week, Marjorie Taylor Greene called for the U.S. to be split into a novel concept which has never happened before.

Wide ranging never would lead to any negative consequences.

But she says, basically, we are a red America and a blue America.

We should be split.

She says that basically woke culture is being shoved down the throats by the Democrats and that people who are Democrats and move to red states shouldn't be allowed to vote for a period of five years.

We have not seen legislation on this.

We actually debated whether or not to include this as a discussion point for the week.

I mean, the kind of outlandish things people in Washington and all over, frankly, say has gotten a little bit old and a little bit tired.

But this is a good reminder point about how Democratic values work.

Right?

Right.

We are stronger when we are divided, but can work through those types of things.

That is the key point of how we organize a democracy.

And obviously, you know, the struggle of democracy is to try to resolve these differences without this kind of name calling and frankly, without ultimately, you know, separating into two countries.

So it's a good reminder of that.

But it also tells us something politically, right, about kind of where the Republican Party is and also where Marjorie Taylor Greene is.

So what's your take on how this all fits into the big picture?

Well, I think well, first of all, it's illegal.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

All right.

Good.

Play start.

Good.

Don't do it, kids.

All right.

It's 100% illegal because, you know, as as former representative, Liz Cheney tweeted back to her tweet for Marjorie Taylor Greene treat.

She said that she swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution.

And you know, the Constitution.

There's only one constitution.

Yeah.

So it's going to be easier.

So that's the first point.

But I think this illustrates two things, right?

One is that well, first of all, as you have said many times, nothing is going to happen.

Yes.

She's not going to get censored.

Why?

She's not going to get censure because, you know, Kevin McCarthy doesn't have the tools to censure her because she's part of that group of people that extended the voting process 15 times to get him where he sat.

So he's not going to do it right.

He's going to keep quiet for now.

Yeah, She's going to say, oh, Mercury, Marjorie, like, don't say those things.

Yeah.

And the finger wagging the hallway.

Yeah.

Silence.

Yeah.

And then the other, I guess important aspect is that it illustrates how she wants or she's trying to audition for becoming Trump's VP.

You know, Good point in the in history.

Right.

He's been shopping.

Yeah.

There has been some reports that, you know, she thinks that she's in the final.

So I think that's important in terms final in terms of what it does to a democracy, it's very harmful.

Yeah, right.

And the first point is that, you know, democracy is the free market of ideas and people have different ideas and people go to these different places, call the House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate or at the state level and discuss these issues.

Right.

Make a point, argue, and whoever has a better idea in theory and given what the people want, that policy is going to be implemented.

Yeah.

And here which is hearing complete absolute nonsense.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

Yeah.

And you know, democracy is not designed for unity.

It just doesn't work that way.

As you said, it's a competitive market and you have to attract people with your ideas.

So democracy's about working through these conflicts in a peaceful way and that let the people lead.

And so that's the goal.

Right?

And this is this is basically our public service announcement reminder, if we could do it after school special starring you and me, we would totally do that.

But the whole premise of how the system works is based upon these sorts of elements.

And so we can't get too far away from them or forget it.

And so this is basically a reminder of that when, you know, she says something even more strange at the end of the day.

Right.

You think?

Question.

Yeah.

Do you think that, you know, I have the perception that the Republican Party is getting tired and tired and more tired of these things?

Yeah, And we saw it right when when Kevin McCarthy was being voted.

Yeah.

You know, you had 90 something percent of the Republican Party say, yeah, let's go with him.

Then.

You know, you have the 20 Republican representative saying, well, no, whatever.

Yeah, but do you think that the main quote unquote stream the Republican Party is going to say like, okay, this is enough?

I think so, because at some point they're going to have to have a book of accomplishments to go to the voters with.

Right.

And that won't be that long from now.

And if they don't have something tangible to show for all the promises, then the voters are going to vote them out.

And honestly, for, you know, the fact it's going to be a presidential year means the Democrats are going to vote in bigger numbers.

And so that majority is in real jeopardy.

Now, we talked about the Senate, which obviously is going to be a different story, although this week we did actually find, too, that Jon Tester, the senator from Montana, is going to run again.

So that was a kind of plus for the Democrats, but they're still going to have trouble holding that.

But the taking back the House is a real possibility.

But actually, on that point, there is another incident this week that was involving a representative from Texas, Lance Gooden.

He basically doubles down on his attacks on Judy Chu, who is a representative from California.

He had on Fox News accused her of essentially not being loyal to the U.S. and not being competent to serve on committees that involved security issues.

He says that she should be barred from access to classified information.

She was, by the way, born in Los Angeles and Los Angeles, as you guessed it, city in the state of California, which is a state in this country.

He was called out by everybody, everybody right his side.

And obviously from the Democratic team, Jeffries basically accused him of engaging in a slanderous accusation.

Mike Gallagher, who's the the chair of the Select Committee on China, pushed back, also saying these are out of bounds comments.

This comes in the context of a lot of Asian violence.

I pulled some numbers on this between March of 2020 and March of 2022.

There are more than 11,000 hate crimes against Asian-Americans.

Women were twice as likely to report these crimes as men.

Physical assaults accounted for 17% of these incidents.

The question I have to you is, are they going to sanction Lance Gooden in the same way that they did in the past, sanction Marjorie Taylor Greene for these sorts of outlandish comments?

I think I know your answer because you kind of already gave it a try.

But tell us.

I mean, this is a different, you know.

Yeah, this a direct attack.

Yes.

On a member of Congress.

Yeah.

And there are rules in Congress that prohibit that kind of stuff.

I think they should do it in that swiftly because, again, it's based on.

I don't know why.

Right.

Right.

Yeah.

There's no anything.

Right.

When they get security clearance.

There is a background check done.

Yeah, very extensive.

So the fact that he's arguing these things, it just creates more and more and more and more.

Animosity amongst the public.

And it has real world implications.

And I think it's you know, it's not even McCarthy to point of view.

It's even worse than that.

And I think it's you know, he should get censored.

And McCarthy needs to do something because if you let it once go.

Yeah.

You open up the doors.

Absolutely.

I agree that that probably should happen, but it won't.

Right.

Know.

And you mentioned the reason why earlier, and that was that McCarthy needs every vote and he's got to be able to make his caucus happy.

And you can't stop the presses every time this sort of thing happens if you're the Republican speaker.

Right.

Like a handful of vote margin.

So that's one thing for sure.

And also, more particularly, he can't afford to alienate the Freedom Caucus.

Right.

This is the very group that holds his speakership in their hands.

And so you cannot go too far to challenge them because it will backfire on you in all kinds of different ways.

Yes, unless you go full force.

Right.

So, I mean, either you are going to be dominated.

Yeah.

Right.

Or yeah, you gather everyone and say we need to put a stop on these nonsense.

Yeah.

And that's another possibility.

Yeah, but I don't know.

Yeah.

And just a kind of big picture here.

I mean, the reason these things keep happening for Greene and for Gooden and for everybody else who makes these sorts of comments, it's because you've got two factors at work.

One is gerrymandering, where these districts are drawn to support one party, the other by the fact that, you know, they don't like what the Democrats are saying is also a result of the fact that that's basically the members are playing to the extremes.

That's the way that both sides work, because that's the way that the structure of the system is.

The other is fundraising, the almighty dollar, right?

You've got to have your base happy and there's a lot of money to flow to your caucus and to your coffers if you are saying these kinds of things because it gets headlines.

I mean, we're talking about an hour, an hour, a little PBS show, right?

So it's clearly the case that this stuff matters.

So to those.

Members and forget about doing the right thing.

No.

That's right.

No, you're totally right.

And that's why there's this sort of disconnect.

And people feel alienated from politics and they look at this and say, you know, kind of wash your hands.

Absolutely.

And it's a problem because, you know, sometimes government can work.

Not this week, though.

Right?

Well, speaking of train wrecks, literally, there was a train wreck that has caused a lot of political problems for the Biden administration.

This train wreck occurred weeks ago in East Palestine, Ohio.

It was effectively a major problem because there was a chemical spill and burn off that jeopardized the health of the people living in those communities and have understandably angered the residents of that town.

So while Joe Biden was dealing with a kind of Ukraine scenario we talked about a few weeks ago, this was a cleanup operation.

It was happening on the ground.

Pete Buttigieg the secretary of transportation under political pressure went to the region to be able to try to fix things politically and smooth over some of these issues.

The National Transportation Security Board came out and effectively said that there was a problem with the wheels.

And so it was a logistical issue, nothing that was nothing that was incompetence.

Right.

But obviously has become a major political issue.

And so obviously, Donald Trump shows up in Ohio to talk about things because.

Because Ohio is a battleground, right?

Yeah, it's interesting.

Over the time we've kind of seen Ohio transition from being a kind of purple state to now being a more red state, It's become more politically damaging for Democrats to ignore the state and to not win it.

So in 2008, the Democrats won the state 52%.

In the presidential and 2020 it was 45%.

That's a pretty big delta.

Yeah, over the last couple of years.

And as a political tool.

They go, Yeah, this right.

That's your word of the week.

So tell me about this train derailment.

What does it mean politically and is it going to be a kind of long term consequence for the Democratic Party in Ohio?

Well, I think I mean, yes and no.

And it's going to depend on damage control.

Yeah, right.

I think that Biden and his administration can flip the narrative.

Yes.

Indicating, you know, first of all, transportation safety is very important and Buttigieg already hinted at.

You know, we need to get the railroad industry in check in terms of these because it's not the first derailment that we have had recently.

That's one.

And the other one is about infrastructure.

When you compare our train lines with other advanced industrialized democracies, we are in diapers, right?

You know, in Europe, you can travel from point A to point B by train.

Yeah, very fast.

Japan underneath an ocean.

Exactly right.

Everything right?

I mean, here it's very complicated to go, you know, from Houston to San Antonio on a train.

Yeah.

And you could easily do that.

Yeah.

So I think that investment in this type of infrastructure is going to be very important in how they flip that narrative.

That and obviously, the third and most important issue is how they take care of the people.

And I think that if they go there with a very clear action plan and take responsibility one way or the other, I think that they can actually, you know, flip it in such a way that they can take a win.

But I think the most important thing is how they're going to take care of the people and how they're going to assure their health and how they're going to be able to clean up the mess.

Yeah, without sending us, you know, the all the waste water.

Yeah.

To these Deer Park facilities we have in Harris County.

Well and that's what the some concern has been about.

This is the sort of thing that happens all the time in this country.

You've got this railway potential disaster that goes through every major city and becomes a real potential problem.

Happily, it hasn't happened in big scale in a way that's, you know, been, you know, something that jeopardize people's health.

But it's certainly a political liability.

And for a president who wants to run on, you know, rebuilding the country's infrastructure, this is kind of a black mark.

So that's one issue.

I think another issue is that it gives a kind of fuel to this sort of populist rage fueled politics that Donald Trump has been so strong at kind of channeling in the Republican Party.

It might not be Trump who's the nominee.

Right?

It could be DeSantis or, you know, Haley or whoever.

Right.

But they're all trying to the same thing, which is to try to cultivate that kind of government is not working.

You know, we're angry and we want to see some big changes made of kind of politics.

And it's working right.

It certainly has worked in Ohio.

So that's another issue the Democrats are struggling with because they need to win back working class voters.

And if they can't do that, then they're going to have a heck of a time trying to recreate Joe Biden's 2020 map.

It's going to look more like Hillary Clinton's.

Yeah.

2016 map.

Yeah.

Well, let's talk about Texas and some equally sad news.

Representative Joaquin Castro has been diagnosed with cancer.

He, though, is express optimism.

He caught it early and it's a treatable cancer.

But he came here to Houston, which is the best place to get sick, I always say to get some treatment.

So we send our thoughts and prayers to him.

Hopefully, things will get better and he will have a speedy recovery because the state needs all hands on deck, especially when it comes to issues of teacher pay.

We talked about this in the last couple of episodes, but basically there's been a task force that's been formed by Greg Abbott to talk about the teacher issue, pay retention, health care.

Right.

The report from that task force came out and came up with a lot of different ways to fix things, all of which extremely expensive.

We know that teachers are underpaid.

We know that they're overworked, especially my kids.

Teachers.

Your kids?

Yeah, they're all they're all they're saints.

And so they're.

There.

Yeah.

They have just the easiest of days.

But but this task force identified several major issues that have to be dealt with, including spending more money per student.

That's something that.

Just briefly.

Already teacher pay has been stagnant.

So basically they recommended increasing the average teacher pay.

The teacher pay a minimum salary in Texas is about $33,600.

The national average is about $6,000 above that.

So that's something they said needs to be increased.

They need to do better at managing workload stress, the need to increase the health care package, availability and funding that happen.

So like a lot this is like this is a $4 billion problem.

Yeah.

And the question is, are they going to fix it?

So are they going to fix it?

Gambling?

Yeah, I think that's a good answer to that.

I mean, you know, yeah, I mean, we are basically we come 28th in terms of average teacher salaries.

Yeah.

Our economy is, you know, the 11th, ninth greatest, largest economy in the world and ah, you know, capital, human capital creation infrastructure is worst in some cases aid than, you know, those developing industrialized countries.

Yeah.

So I think that we need to invest these very, very, very seriously.

Why?

Because we are jeopardizing the future of this state.

Yeah.

In terms of political leadership, in terms of economic innovation, in terms of job creation, in terms of every single little thing, even tacos.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you can't jeopardize.

It on barbecue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So it's extremely important that they take these very seriously and see these, you know, not as an education problem, right?

This is a health care issue problem.

This is a obviously education problem, but it's economic policy and it's basically state security in many, many, many shapes.

So I think that when you look at that, you start building policies around that are going across court and try to feed these potential, you know, gap in the budget.

Yeah.

That's a great point, actually.

You think about the kind of, you know, downstream.

I mean, of course we should just call the show grade point, right?

You're always making good points.

But I like the way you frame it as a kind of resource problem and as a kind of capital problem, because it's something that trickles all the way through the economy.

Right?

It's there's a downstream issue here in terms of like how well the teachers do their job.

Another stunning statistic I found so that 70% of teachers in a poll that was done last year considered quitting because morale is so bad, they have to fix this.

Here's the issue, though, and I think politically there's a kind of problem because the everyone seems to agree these are problems.

Right.

And even to the point where, you know, you've got people like Governor Abbott, Lieutenant Governor Patrick saying, yeah, we're going to give more money to each student, you know, and we're going to make sure the teachers are better paid.

That's all going to happen.

The question is, is going to happen enough?

We don't know.

We'll have to see what the bills look like.

We'll track that as we go.

But the other thing is that they're also pushing the sort of, you know, privatize public education.

Right.

So it's not going to be fully privatized.

That's not practical.

But they're talking about different ways.

And there've been a bunch of bills that have essentially privatized some part of the amount of money that the state gives to each student.

That's been a big push for years.

But obviously now it's, I think, become kind of right to its head.

The issue, though, is that when you look at these findings, it suggests the system that's in peril.

It suggests a public education process that's really flawed.

And then to kind of throw yet another kind of wrench into this is, I think, a potential damage to their own case on that.

Right.

So they've got a bunch of different things to have to unravel.

And I think still the prospect for vouchers is, you know, kind of far fetched.

But this to me, this document, the task force that they unveiled, you know, the information from, it suggests that things aren't going that well and it could be a real problem for them to kind of follow through on the other objectives they have politically.

Right.

So.

And once again, is this issue of resources.

So if we don't fix the formula funding, if you don't fix this, if you don't fix that, and then right now you're going to throw let's do, you know, education, savings accounts, vouchers, however you want to call it.

You know, you're taking resources away from.

Yeah.

A place, right.

And it's you know, I'm robbing Paul to pay Peter or it's the other way around.

It's the other way around.

But your analogy works.

Well, I mean, I mean, because now it's leap right now.

Well, they don't see it that way.

They don't see as robbing one person.

They see it as basically repackaging Peter's money to give to Paul in a way more equitable.

And that's helpful for Paul.

But that's, again, a matter of debate.

Right?

So we'll have to see how this plays out.

There are a lot of details that have to be ironed out and to be honest, they could just ignore this and say, okay, we're going to give you a little bit more money and kind of call it quits.

So but now, you know, speaking about that and what about, for example, you know, Speaker Phelan's priority bills, right?

I mean, is he aiming at education?

Is he really focusing into that or not?

I think he will, yeah.

This week he unveiled a series of bills that were Democratic adjacent bills and that left off that list a bunch of things that Dan Patrick talked about and that the governor mentioned in his state.

So a little intrigue.

Yeah, a little sizzle.

Some of things he did mention were expanding Medicaid coverage for new mothers last session, rather, the 87 session, they expanded from like 3 to 6 and they want to go to 12.

So that's one thing.

And also exempting menstrual products from sales taxes and cracking down on how the various companies use data.

So these are all kind of very strong member priorities.

And I think that says a lot about where speaker feeling is He's embracing what the members want, but he's also standing up to the other of the big right.

It's going to make these breakfasts awkward, right?

The Big three have breakfast every week and they're going to have to.

Do they have that all depends what you want.

And I think the governor's mansion can make.

Usually that's where it is, although sometimes they meet in the speaker's office.

It just depends on priorities.

Gotcha.

If you're the speaker, you want them to come to you because.

Right, it's your home port.

But he's basically sort of I think, not ignoring them, but certainly saying like we have priorities, too, and here's kind of what we're going to do, which is pretty interesting because he's not going to be a kind of lackey for them.

So I was pretty impressed by that.

Well, what do you see in his list of kind of to do?

Well, I mean, it's issues about mothers, issues about children and issues about, you know, being against big tech.

Yeah.

So I think that all those three issues go and cross a court cut across different political lines, right?

Yeah.

Republicans are in favor of everything.

Yeah.

And Democrats are going to be in favor of everything.

So I think he has a mix of issues that he's going to get a lot of support on those issues.

And he's once again, he's not trying to mingle into the red meat and he's like, no, yeah.

I mean, I don't want to get close to that.

Resist because it's coming, right?

Right.

That the barbarians barbarian late and like he can't say no for too long like he's going to have to let some of those priorities go.

Yes.

But he's giving you know all the members of the House tools to say, we're going to stand behind these guys.

These are our priorities.

Exactly.

And like I said, they're kind of member priorities.

So and they want to separate the House, Right?

It's like, this is our turf.

Yeah.

You don't come to my house and tell me what I'm going to do.

You have to have that very clear.

And that's a message that he's sending to, you know, the Senate and perhaps, you know, the governor's mansion.

So it's very clear to me in such a way that it's also extremely interesting.

Yeah.

So my favorite ledge moments are when they like open up the chamber doors and try to shout across the rotunda to get each other attention.

Like, I think we'll see more of that House versus Senate battles.

But here's one bipartisan story that we'll end on, and that's about possibly cutting sales tax.

Royce West and Bob Hall, who have literally nothing in common.

The fact that they're both humans on planet Earth have come up with the prospect of actually reducing the sales tax rate from six and a quarter to seven and three or sorry to five and three quarter.

So tax rate would go down slightly.

This would basically put about a $7 billion, you know, kind of budget hole, but also would give people back their money.

The state has had the six in a quarter since about 1990 states or cities have the ability to be able to add an extra 2%.

So your local tax rate basically is almost always eight and a quarter percent.

This is interesting because a lot of the states money comes from sales tax, more than 56%.

That's going to be a structural limit that's problematic.

The other is that cities have been squeezed.

And so if you take money away from the cities with the fact that they've already kind of condensed how much money they can spend in terms of or how much money they can increase their taxes by, it could be a real problem for cities.

So this is definitely going to be a money issue that's going to have to it's good for people because we like tax cuts.

But it's also problematic because while you're talking about a lot of money that won't come to the state that they often rely on so.

Well, absolutely.

And that's a problem.

But this is a public finance issue.

Yeah.

In the sense that, you know, the state is growing.

We need infrastructure.

We need better roads, water infrastructure, yeah, the electrical grid, so on and so forth.

So we need money to pay for these things.

Pays for a lot of stuff.

So.

Exactly.

You know, you said it, you know, in the education issue, right?

It's barely been funded.

So if we cut these things, you know, what are we doing?

I mean, in the not now, but in the next ten, 15, 20, 30 years, what's going to happen?

And I think that, you know, you start digging a hole and then a hole, a hole and it's going to take more money.

Well, they got to work around the hole.

Yeah.

You can't build unless you fill it back in, which we never do.

Exactly.

But we're going to keep an eye on these and many other issues next week, Brandon.

And thanks to everybody for watching and thanks to everybody at Houston Public Media for making this a great show and for putting us on the air.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina.

And I'm Brandon Rott We'll see you next week.