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

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

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

Thanks for hanging out with us and talking politics.

I think this is kind of a pivotal week, actually.

There's a bunch of things that are happening in D.C. and in Texas that really are unique and definitely are going to show kind of what's to come.

So at the national level, federal level, the kind of budget proposal pass that the House has been negotiate for several months in Texas.

We're seeing, I think, a real pivot point on things like, the vouchers fight.

Also, the state lottery is a bit under water.

The scratch off is basically led to $0.

So we'll talk about all these things.

But I want to get your take on the way that the kind of federal government is working.

So, one of the big things obviously, in this week was that the House passed a budget resolution, a very, very slim margin.

Yeah.

It's a bit of a miracle this happened, right?

The miracle on the Potomac.

But I do think that this was something that we can really give credit to Donald Trump for, because Trump spent a lot of time talking about the budget the way he wanted it.

He was able to get the Republican Party in line.

He probably saved Speaker Johnson's job, who all week was looking for divine intervention.

Well, he got it right.

It came from the white House.

This is only going to bolster kind of Donald Trump's efforts to try to get the Republicans on line.

And obviously it's going to be something that's, you know, going to really set the stage for how the budget's going to be treated.

So what do you make of the passage of the budget as well?

I mean, very simple, right?

One is, President Trump used, president, Johnson, LBJ move worked the phones.

Yep.

Probably very late.

Some lapel.

Grabbing.

Yes, probably.

And I mean, it shows that.

First of all, he has control even for the people that were against, increasing or not having enough substantial cuts.

Because several of these members had said they weren't going to vote for the resolution and were adamant about it like no qualms, but they ended up switching.

But I think you're exactly right.

There was a lot of complications to this budget members either said that the tax cuts were not permanent, and that was a problem that cuts generally in the budget were too much.

The cuts were not enough.

Yeah.

The, you know, budget tight cap was, you know, too high or too low.

So members had all kinds of problems.

And that put Johnson in the middle of the kind of moderates who are really worried about what's going to happen in the midterms.

And the hard liners.

Yeah, that's coming.

And the hard liners who say, like, you know, we need to really kind of press this because time is short, like you say.

I mean, the midterms right around the corner.

And they want to make sure they get this in the mix.

We're going to talk in a second about Donald Trump's joint address to the houses of Congress.

But this is something that he's going to have to and want to brag about.

So let me ask you this.

I mean, getting back at Trump, the question is, do you think that Donald Trump's kind of, you know, the sort of umbrella is big enough to cover these members who are going to have to explain to their constituents that there are going to be these massive cuts, and there are always going to be a tremendous increase in the debt and deficit.

I don't think so.

Yeah.

I mean, I see two possibilities.

The first one is that those members are going to be voted out in the midterm elections, and who's going to replace them?

There's obviously two chances.

The swing districts are going to the Democrats.

I mean, either they vote for Democrats, right.

And they lose control for, at least the House.

Yeah.

Or they're going to be replaced by hardliners, you know, completely 100% backers of, President Trump.

Yeah.

Which is less likely to happen.

Yeah.

So that is a big risk.

Because then for the second part of the administration, there's going to be deadlock, as we were with the Biden administration.

Yeah.

And nothing is going to get done.

That's true.

Yeah.

And I mean, President Trump's not exactly happy with this, right.

He said that he wants to see fewer cuts to Medicaid.

He said that he wants to have more tax cuts.

He's also floated the idea of a balanced budget, which is just, I think, practically impossible.

Yes, the that laugh is exactly probably what most Republicans did, because that's not a practical outcome given, especially all the other things that are on the menu.

And the problem is that there is not enough places to cut.

Yeah.

Unless you do Medicare, which is nope, Social security.

Nope.

And defense spending.

No.

Yeah.

So the proportion that you're left to cut is very small.

Even when you look at the federal workforce, that represents around 1.5% of total spend, it is not enough.

It's not enough money.

And the argument about waste, fraud, etc., etc., etc.

is not basically, you know, getting very transparent in terms of the amount of money that they potentially, presumably, allegedly have found.

Right?

That's exactly it.

Yeah.

The ledger doesn't look quite as positive at the bottom as it did.

That this is an issue, I think, when it comes to how you sell this to voters.

That's the key.

Yeah.

And you know, you you said last week.

You know Doge is popular and the efficiency and government's always going to be something people like.

Yeah.

But when it comes down to the actual nitty gritty, it could be a problem.

The other thing is that the notion, the prospect that the idea of like efficiency and government or cuts to government is broad enough that you're going to see the that being used as a way to say, okay, we're we're saving on Medicare, we're cutting Medicare, but we're also, you know, saving technically.

So it's really about efficiency that's going to, I think, really have to be carefully tailored, because you can only cover so much of a political argument with the sort of we're being more efficient, we're cutting out waste, right?

When people start to feel like, okay, I'm.

Not getting what i use to get.

The reality.

Yeah.

And that's a real issue.

So there's still this.

The other thing is that, you know, this has to go to the Senate, right?

Yeah.

The Senate, I think, had some serious objections and or some additions that might not be relevant.

So Tammy Duckworth, from from Wisconsin added an amendment to the Senate bill that said that they wanted to pay for IVF treatments, which Donald Trump promised he would do.

That is probably not going to be something that is like budget possible.

The other thing is that the amendment in the Senate skinny version had, an addition that said, basically, we're going to try to cut a lot like the way the House budget it's going to look at that amendment failed.

So that means that the Senate is really not on the same page when it comes to the House on those cuts.

So that's going to have to be something that they resolve and it's going to possibly be resolved when Donald Trump takes the dais and is giving a speech to the joint session of Congress, can he use his joint session appearance to convince Republicans, especially in the Senate, that they should back his version of one big, beautiful bill?

I mean, yes or no?

I mean already, you know, those Senators are 100% behind Donald Trump.

Then you have the senators that might be behind Donald Trump and then the senators that you have that, you know, are most likely not going to support him.

Yeah.

And he's going to be a senator from Alaska.

Senator from Maine saying, I don't know maybe.

Right.

So that's that's a complication.

And the other issue is how likely the Senate in terms of reelection prospects are going to be.

Yeah.

So if they're safe, maybe not.

Yeah.

I mean, John Cornyn, for instance, John Cornyn is in a complicated, position right now, and we're going to see if he's going to stand up and how they make an argument in terms of basically the financial stability of the country.

Yeah, that's going to be what matters.

Yeah, I noticed you didn't mention any Democrats on this, which to me makes a lot of sense.

Right.

Because yeah, sure, they're almost irrelevant.

Right.

And even if they weren't a kind of legislative player in the current Congress, there has been this theme for presidents in terms of communication that they really only speak to the base.

There's a lot of evidence to suggest that also, when presidents talk about out partizans in negative ways, it increases the public's view of negatively of those out partizan.

So really, Donald Trump can do two things right.

He can talk badly about Democrats, which, ramps up Republicans locally.

That is a plus for him when it comes to midterms.

But he's also able to make sure he keeps his party unified.

So there's a kind of going partizan atmosphere here that the president can use as a national scale to be able to convince those reluctant Republicans to join him.

And in some sense, the Democrats are kind of irrelevant, really.

They're just kind of like going to get hit by shrapnel on this.

And that's just the problem for the out party.

So there's really no persuasion of them that's going to be able to move the needle here, because effectively they're just sort of on the outside looking in.

Obviously President Trump's got a lot more to say thematically.

He wants to say, you know, this is sort of reoccurring, you know, as we've seen from the first administration, an effort to make America great.

You know, he'll outline some of his vision for that.

But what else is he going to say?

Obviously, potentially about the deals that are coming in terms of the war, between, the Ukraine and the Russia invasion?

Right now things are looking, possibly for a deal that the US is going to get some, minerals and gas deals.

And I don't know what else.

Zelensky's coming this way to the US to sign it.

Sign it.

So we're going to see obviously, relations with Europe are not in very good shape.

The incoming German chancellor said that we're five minutes to midnight, which is a reference to the old Cold War countdown clock.

That power vacuum is going to be meaningful.

But here's the thing to me.

You know, Donald Trump can think really short term on this.

You can think basically in the span of one year where you can accomplish a lot of the things you promised.

And even if it's not perfect, right, you can still basically get Doge to do a bunch of cuts.

You can fight immigration reform, you can get the budget that you want, including the tax cuts that you had promised.

That's a winning kind of arrangement.

And people may be unhappy about things, and there's no question that that's going to have an effect on the ground.

But at least in terms of the promises that he's made and the kind of, you know, tone that he wanted to set, he's basically done that.

Absolutely.

And he has to do it this year because you don't know what's going to happen in '26.

And that's one one of the most important things.

And the other thing is that the way that he communicated using, the, I guess trying to shrink public opinion is what matters.

Speaking directly to voters is he has to be very careful in terms of how he carries those wins with reality.

Yeah, right.

And reality basically doesn't mean, let's say, immigration, deportations or anything like that, because, you know, that's kind of I guess.

Yeah, 30,000ft above the ground.

Yeah.

But he's going to be, you know, are you paying for cereal?

More or less.

Yeah.

For gas more?

or less?

Can you get the extra egg at the Waffle House.

Yeah.

I mean I'm not made of money.

I don't know.

So, so those are the issues that are going to be confronted because at that moment voters are going to say, but wait, wait, wait, were you saying that you had inflation under control.

Yeah.

That's a great point.

I mean you know the president is prone to exaggeration and over promise on these things.

Could be a real problem.

Now in a campaign.

Overpromising is one thing.

But when you're governing and people are like actually paying attention it could be yeah very different.

So we'll see how he ends up on this.

But it's going to be a pretty pivotal moment I think for him.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

But let's talk about a different Senate issue.

And that's involving us, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas.

The Federal Election Commission has just dismissed a complaint against him 5 to 1, basically over a podcast that he received profits for in the form of money to his superPAC.

I guess I should clarify that it's not money going to him.

It's money going to his superPAC.

And the question before the commissioners was basically whether or not there was some collusion between, right, Ted Cruz and, and the super PAC and, or iHeartMedia, which was the company that runs the podcast, that paid the super PAC.

They found that there was no relationship and therefore it was all hunky dory.

Now, you and I know that you can make millions of dollars on podcasts.

Oh, yeah.

This is like we're swimming at money, just just really pushing off advertisers.

Embarrassingly so.

But sorry, but in this case, you know, Ted Cruz got a basically about $1 million donation from iHeartMedia to the super PAC, which, of course, benefits Ted Cruz.

Right.

You know, the race in Texas is in 2024, was particularly close, but certainly was the case that Ted Cruz had a sizable war chest and was able to use that effectively to beat Colin Allred.

To me, this is also a complication because we're still in the Wild West when it comes to campaign finance.

This is still, I think, a set of rules that are sort of unclear, probably that skirts the law.

That's legal, but definitely challenges it on its sort of face, and it creates some implications to what happens in the future, because so many members now have all kinds of ways to, you know, communicate to their, to their constituents.

So it could be in the form of a Substack.

It could be, podcast, it could be a digital series, it could be a book that they write.

And the question then is sort of how much are they going to get?

How much is the superPAC going to get?

The FEC didn't kind of clarify this except to say that, you know, the member can't be the one who's making the request.

But, you know, Ted Cruz was at some of these meetings and they didn't think that was sufficient enough.

So it would have to be like a real smoking gun in order for this to come out.

So for now, at least, the FEC has said this is all right.

Yeah.

And and again, the big question this year is there have been changes at the FEC.

And the question is if it's been I guess still a neutral, body that is going to regulate these things.

Yeah.

And that is a big question, right.

Because the problem with the institution is what, once they get politicized.

Yeah, it's very difficult to de-politicize them.

That's true.

And goes for both Republicans and Democrats because when Democrats go, get in those seats.

Yeah.

Which will happen.

Yeah.

Eventually.

Yeah.

I don't think that they're going to be like, okay.

Yeah.

Well, these are the rules.

Well, and that's what I mean.

The FEC playing directly strictly by the rules.

And that's probably the fairest thing to do But at the same time, it opens up lots of exactly these kinds of things that maybe they hadn't intended.

But honestly, that's just kind of the way of things.

And like I said, this legally at least works for now, even if it creates all kinds of problems down the road.

Speaking of problems, let's talk Texas now, I know you're a big lottery player.

Scratch off at it, right?

Just trying to chase that.

Yeah, I have my lucky penny.

Yeah, that's for the scratch off.

You got your numbers, right?

Yeah.

And it's like you're going to win one of these days, I feel it.

Oh.

Thank you.

But the better chance.

It be soon.

Hopefully it's soon.

The better chance for you to win is to join a mega conglomerate and have them buy up all the tickets and then have that be your payoff.

So, yeah, that might be a little farther off for you, but but the scratch offs, you know, you can definitely, you know, pay for some eggs if you're lucky.

Yeah.

It's a, it's a big, big, big, big thing where, the lieutenant governor, has been deeply involved making a site visit to the place, investigating, like, what's going on with his.

Own phone and the stats recording him.

He's making phone calls to the attorneys.

So a lot happened this week.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, normally it's the case that, like, the lotto only makes headlines when there's a huge jackpot, right?

But there's been a lot of bad headlines for a lottery at the very worst moment for them.

So here's a few.

The first is that the lottery commission basically is conducting an internal investigation, responding to lawmakers questions about whether or not they're basically just laundering money for these big mega corporations that are out there buying a bunch of the tickets through these courier services and then effectively, you know, winning the lottery.

Dan Patrick said, this is a problem.

Paul Bettencourt is, you know, asking these questions, saying effectively, he thinks there's a 90% probability that this is just sort of money laundering and that has to stop.

The lottery announced that they are going to nix the currying, career services, after Dan Patrick threatened to do away with it.

The, governor has said that he's going to direct the Texas Rangers the badge, not the bat, to investigate.

Just a lot of brewing kind of controversy around this scandal.

At the very worst time for a lottery commission, where it's in session, where if you make legislators mad uncomfortable, if they have questions at the very period, the only period they can do something about it, then you're definitely in danger.

And the other is that they're under sunset right now, which in Texas government is something happens every seven years for agencies.

They're reviewed kind of, you know, soup to nuts to figure out, you know, kind of how the agency is working.

What agency functions are doing well, what need to be stopped or transferred.

So this is really kind of their review, like their performance review.

And it's not going super great.

So what do you think about the implications to all of this emerging swirling scandal around lottery?

Well, I mean, obviously, I mean, technically speaking, what the couriers, Corey deed is perhaps not illegal.

Yeah.

But once again, you're getting into the cracks of the legislation.

And you said, well, yeah.

I mean, it's kind of, you know.

Yeah.

Suspicious.

Well, that's what Dan Patrick implied.

He was on the phone to one of the attorneys for the courier service and said, like, is this the way you think the lottery should run?

Like, it doesn't seem very fair.

And a lot of lawmakers are asking the same question.

Absolutely.

Right.

I mean, obviously winning the lottery, the probability that any, you know, regular folk like myself, he's going to win, but.

I'm going to win.

Them.

But not I know you will, if you profit share with me.

That's true.

Let's join.

It's very low, right?

Yeah.

But still, I mean, people like to play it, you know, the scratch off, it's like adrenaline right now.

Maybe I'm going to hit it.

Maybe not.

Maybe.

Yeah, I don't know.

The games are fun, right?

And, like, you know, I think people, though, want to be convinced it's fair.

And the problem is that people are not convinced now.

That's right.

Exactly.

And so that's one issue that they're going to have to address.

But like this has been something that the lottery has done for a long time.

All the lottery commissioners have been chosen by Greg Abbott.

So he's like, I'm shocked to see that this is happening.

Well, you appointed all of them.

So this is definitely falling on your desk.

So the appointment of the Texas Rangers to do something about it definitely is related to that.

But here's the other implication, and we've talked a little bit about this over the course of the last couple of episodes.

And that's that the leg is considering expanding legal gaming.

So it might be casino destination resorts, it might be the online gaming.

That's a very likely possibility.

This is going to happen literally.

Yesterday I got a text message I'm sure a lot of people did that was like, you know, legalized gaming is sort of a lucrative for Texas.

And there's like a little video with it.

Right.

So the lobbying forces are out.

And I think that this scandal jeopardizes the ability.

Oh, absolutely.

That to pass because.

100.

Members look at this and they say, well, wait a minute, we can't even run the lottery, which we've had since the 90s.

How are we going to run an even more lucrative and more expansive agenda on this, where, you know, we have to really be sure that there's no kind of criminal element that seeps into it.

There are serious controls over kind of people ability to operate within this.

So there's just a lot of, I think now, problematic outcomes when it comes to getting gambling.

Absolutely.

And if it stinks, people are going to stay away from it.

Yeah.

Regardless of the money, that potential lobbyist, pour into the session.

Yeah.

And especially obviously, since, as you said, Governor Abbott appointed the members of the, Lottery commission and he's going to be more careful as he should be.

Yeah.

If like, I'm not going to get myself into this mess.

Yeah.

Without first knowing what is really, really going on.

Yeah.

And I think that's a fair assessment.

Yeah.

Well, one thing that people have said is that if the state pursues the educational savings accounts or vouchers, then there needs to be a dedicated revenue source to make it happen.

It's possible that expanded gaming could be that.

Now lottery, of course, is tied to the public ed system.

So, right, some of the money from the proceeds from the lottery goes to public ed.

Right.

And that was something that was built into the cake.

Yeah, a long time ago.

It's not a lot of money, but, you know, destination gaming would definitely bring in more money.

And so a lot of lawmakers are kind of tying these things together, at least in sort of hypothetical practice.

And the debate over vouchers, over educational savings accounts is heating up.

It's to some degree, Abbott versus everybody.

He has been fighting with Democrats on Twitter.

He's been making speeches.

He's talked about Mary Gonzalez from Clint, the member of the House who's got an Ed saying she's a fake doctor.

He's fighting with Gina Hinojosa from Austin, saying she has her facts wrong.

James Talarico, who's been a big, opponent of vouchers.

Abbott's against him, so I think we should just print T-shirts that says, you know, Abbott versus everybody.

He is not alone, though, right?

A lot of Republicans are really trying to generate enthusiasm about this.

We're seeing Donald Trump weigh in on the voucher story in Texas.

Elon Musk, who is obviously a government employee, sort of, you know, making the rounds, talking about how he wants to see, you know, ESAs in Texas.

So this has become a national fight.

The question is, do you think in the current form, we're going to see some passage of this in the house?

Yes.

Yeah.

I mean how the cake or the salad is going to turn out at the end, who knows.

Yeah.

But I think that, you know, speaker Burrows had signaled that, yeah, we're going to do vouchers this session.

Yeah.

But we don't know how is going to look at the end.

Yeah.

Now Burrows approach to this is slightly more inexpensive than what the Senate has asked for.

Basically Burrows has asked for about, you know, about $3,000, $4,000 less.

The goal is to tab how much the ESA's get to what the public ed's funding is.

So there is a kind of incentive for public ed per student funding to go up.

That also is part of what they plan to do.

So the Texas two step, they're calling it House Bill two and House Bill three basically does a combination of these things right.

In addition, some other changes like reducing the time for the STAR test.

And my kids who are still taking the STAR test.

like, could not be happier about less STAR testing, but obviously that's another kind of implication because that's how school districts are judged.

So there's still this kind of big question about what education policy will look like.

But definitely something is going to pass.

And I guess the question is, is there enough accountability built into this to make it work?

I mean, there's a concern that basically that, you know, speaking of the STAR tests that public schools don't have to do with the STAR test.

And so the students in there, may or may not qualify.

They may or may not meet the standards that we expect them to.

I mean, that that's private schools, probably private schools.

Yeah.

And when it comes to, you know, special needs kids, like, are those going to be taken care of in the way that the state demands lots of accountability questions that haven't been ruled out because they're still trying to figure out the finances of it.

So how is this going to play out?

Well, the more accountability is the question here.

Is or the way that I see it is very simple.

If you're going to make these private institutions accountable to what similar to what public institutions and public schools are?

Yeah, that's the same thing.

Yeah.

Like it's exactly the same thing.

Why not just give the money to.

Right.

Like Conroe ISD.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Why are we why are you doing these duplicating the thing.

Right.

Yeah.

And also, we have to take a look back at the.

The current state of the public education system is that, remember in what was that 2007, 2008?

They took away the state legislature, took away a lot of billions of dollars from the public education system.

So the big question is, why should we be not focusing first?

Yeah, on giving that money back.

The full thing where the interests include.

Oh why not?

Yeah.

And see where these public institutions are.

I'm not against or, support school vouchers or ESAs.

You know, I'm, I'm right in the middle.

I'm just looking at the false implications.

Yeah.

In a way that you can create a double system.

Yeah.

Where you're putting money left and right.

Yeah.

For achieving the same thing.

So can we think it in a different way, where the ultimate goal is to have kids that are prepared for whatever it is.

Yeah.

I mean, I think part of this is the politics of it, right?

I mean, the Republicans have had some traction.

Sorry.

I was thinking just in public policy.

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

It turns out it's all about politics.

But, you know, Greg Abbott definitely has incentives to do this.

He's looking at his legacy.

He wants to be the governor who brought the educational changes you're talking about to Texas.

When people walk by his portrait in the Capitol, obviously he wants to keep up with other states.

Iowa, Arizona, Virginia, have all moved in this direction.

He wants to be in that same mix of those governors.

He got 0% at the CPAC straw poll for who should be the next president.

He'd like that number at least to be in single digits.

So obviously that's a incentive for him to make a splash on the national level and money.

Right?

I mean, it's maybe to obvious to say that campaign donations move the needle in Texas, but they almost always do.

Jeff Yass has given him $10 million.

He's a billionaire investor from Pennsylvania, and this gets mixed up in all the politics of this.

So the money is an issue.

The accountability is an issue.

There's still lots of questions about this, but I think that's why the Republicans are pushing so hard for this, because they know that there are just lots of questions they have to answer, and they'd like just to get the vote and get things moving and then figure out the details.

Yeah, but I mean, figuring out the details.

Yeah, it's going to be, you know, the devil's risk.

Yeah.

I mean, it's risky because it implies a lot of money that we may or may not have in the future.

Yeah.

And stuff that we just don't know if we're going to do it or not.

Yeah.

So but this is going to be another issue that we're going to be trying to disentangle for the next couple of weeks.

I'm Jeronimo Cortina and I'm Brandon Rottinghaus.

The conversation keeps up next week.

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