TMHA Post Thanksgiving and Pre-Session Update

We hope everyone had a terrific Turkey Day, and that you have come out of your tryptophan induced napping to return to your daily routine.  Or at least the modified routine we find in the time between Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Don’t worry am not going to ask anyone to confess their browser history from Cyber Monday, I’m sure you were all laser focused at work.

In the pre-session political world, all of the new incoming legislators are in Austin this week going through orientation.  The soon to be freshmen members are also joined by returning members for various events, final fundraisers before the “blackout period” begins on December 8, and pre-session caucuses. 

We are out meeting new members, and later this afternoon will attend Rep. Dennis Bonnen’s event at the Four Seasons in Austin.  Rep. Bonnen is the highly favored and presumptive next Speaker of the House, which means today’s event is expected to be jam packed with legislative members.

The new bill filings continue to roll in each morning.  Our daily reading and monitoring of bills continues.  For those college football enthusiasts with a fondness for nostalgia, you might be happy to hear that Rep. Lyle Larson filed a bill yesterday that would require Texas A&M University and the University of Texas to play against each other in football on Thanksgiving or the Friday or Saturday following Thanksgiving.  Failure to schedule such a game would result in neither school being able to offer any athletic scholarships for the following year.  In the parlance of motivation techniques, this bill can be easily categorized as more “stick” than “carrot.”

So far, the bill filed count is at 573, so we still have a long way to go to the more than 6,000 bills we expect to be filled this year.