Talk Radio on Video
April 13th, 2007 at 11:16 am
The Capitol’s buzzing over a dust up between Sen. John Whitmire and everyone’s favorite freshman to pick on, former talk radio host Sen. Dan Patrick. It all went down way after the important vote on the budget had passed, as Lite Guv. DavidDewhurst was just trying to get the bill through final passage.
The precursor to the fireworks was Patrick’s earlier grandstanding that he was “sick and tired of the middle class … always being labeled rich” when it came to the property tax debate. It was a big show in his PR campaign to prove he’s a middle class warrior. Sen. Lucio didn’t care for it, saying, “You have your priorities, and we have ours,” referring to the rest of the Senate’s efforts to craft the budget. (You can see the exchange here at the 5:05:00 mark.)
But the real tussle started five minutes later.
Whitmire rose and began, “Sen. Patrick, you — a moment ago you were lecturing my best friend on the Senate floor. And what you did was you got my attention.” That was a reference to Patrick’s heated exchange a few moments earlier with Sen. Mario Gallegos (D-Houston), back on the Senate floor for the first time since undergoing liver surgery.Whitmire seemed intent on running Patrick down for going after Gallegos. He asked Patrick to itemize every single piece of the budget he felt should be cut. Earlier Patrick had said his “small staff,” as opposed to the distinguished Texas Senate, found $3 billion in wasteful spending. He also called Sen. Steve Ogden, the budget’s author, “the smartest guy in the room” — an explicit reference to thebook of the same name that’s all about the crooks at Enron.
Patrick hemmed and hawed at Whitmire’s request, but the Senate Dean cut him off: “Get started!” But really, a transcript wouldn’t do the exchange justice. Click here. When the video loads, hit Ctrl+E and then jump to 5:10:39. You won’t be disappointed.
It was obvious grandstanding on Patrick’s part — he clearly had no intention of working the process to try to cut the budget. Of course, in Patrick’s defense, senators and the lite gov. grandstand just about every day (such as Dewhurst pushing the death penalty for pedophiles, which even the prosecutors don’t want). Patrick was just a little more blatant about it.
May 5th, 2007 at 12:29 pm
[…] on whether or not his aim was to re-regulate college tuition (he said no). Sen. Dan Patrick (who dug himself into a hole weeks ago posturing about all the ways he could trim the budget) asked some questions, but told […]