The Texan Podcast - A Conversation with House Speaker Dustin Burrows — The Texan's 89th Session Kickoff

Episode Date: January 30, 2025

On Tuesday, Texas House Speaker Dustin Burrows (R-Lubbock) sat down with The Texan’s Senior Reporter Brad Johnson for his first interview since securing the speakership.Listen to more interviews from our 89th Session Kickoff wherever you get your podcasts. If you like what you hear, subscribe and leave us a review.

Hello everybody, thank you all for being here. I'm Brad Johnson, senior reporter at The Texan. I'm happy to welcome Speaker Dustin Burroughs, Republican from Lubbock, here for an interview. Mr. Speaker, welcome. Thank you, Brad. Always happy to be back here, and obviously good to see you as well. Thank you. You know, you have spent at least a few sessions now in and out of, or adjacent to, or in leadership, but now you're in the chair. What's the learning curve been like? Look, I mean, the role of the speaker obviously is somewhat of a making sure all of the members are able to be successful in what they want to do you know I look around we have fantastic members some of

them you know have had great successes some of them have been overlooked for some period of time and making sure we're taking the time to figure out what is the priorities of their district what are the big bills they want to work on and really trying to make sure they're plugged in and have a member driven speaker's office. That is something I have met with and explained to every member that I want to do and encourage. And that's just a different role, but one that I'm gladly taking on. And we have some fantastic members of the Texas House that I think are going to have some fantastic sessions.

You know, coming in last year has been pretty crazy, A very contentious speaker fight that you ended up winning. And it seems to have left the house about as fractured as we've seen it in a long time. How do you manage this? I'm going to push back a little bit on it. I mean, right, this is the first speaker's race where you can have outside influences and money spent and things of that nature. It's always political. You know, things have changed. There is growing momentum on having a unified House. I mean, there is clearly, and I won't get into the details of it, but you can look vote after vote after vote. More and more Republicans are coming on board, and we are unifying. And I'm not done yet. There is not a single Republican on that floor

that I don't want to be a good speaker for, help support their agenda, and push forward. So I think, you know, as we continue to go through the budget and getting, you know, legislation off the floor, it's only going to grow. And I expect that Republicans, at least by the end of the session, will be unified. I don't think it's a fractured House. I think sometimes it just gives an opportunity to get to know each other better and have better conversations. Let's touch on the House rules fight from last week. You know, we saw a drastic change in how the rules have been set up in recent sessions. You know, first and foremost,

Democrats are not allowed to chair committees, and that is something that those in the Republican Party have been pushing for for a while. Now, the counter to that is, well, they have vice chairs that, at least based on some of the interpretations of language, have somewhat more authority than they used to. What's your thoughts on that? The Republican Party of Texas and Republicans wanted to make sure that Democrats were banned from committee chairmanships. That happened. Full stop. When?

That is exactly what happened last week on the Texas House floor. Much of what you're seeing is trying to foster unwritten things where vice chairs always have a working relationship with their chairs. No different than it is in probably many other states, many other things and things that have pre-existed this set of rules and anything like that. But you now have the full win, I believe that should be the full stop for those who've advocated for years and years and years that they wanted to see Democrats banned

from committee chairmanships. Their voices were heard, that was passed last week in the House rules, and I hope Republicans will take that as a victory. We saw when the debate was occurring, the previous question called, and we haven't seen that in a long time, particularly that early in the session. That seems to be, did that give critics of your speakership or how the rules are set up more ammunition? Look, I mean, at the end of the day, there's always going to be critics

of a speakership. There's always going to be opposition. And by the way, I mean, at the end of the day, there's always going to be critics of a speakership. There's always going to be opposition. And by the way, I think it's healthy for there to be an opposition to any speakership, including my own. It helps make sure that we're always advancing policy. I think it always helps to make sure that there is a tension that's actually there.

I've been part of the opposition before. I understand the role that it plays. And whether I personally like it at all times or not really doesn't matter. of the opposition before. I understand the role that it plays. And, you know, whether, you know, I personally like it at all times or not really doesn't matter. I think it's healthy to continue to have an opposition that, you know, does exactly what's being done. There were other changes in the House rules, particularly expanding some committees, state affairs, big one. You know, why was the decision made to go that route closing some committees and consolidating them and others look there is no such thing as a bad committee in the Texas house every single one

has a jurisdiction that's important to all of the Texans that live here probably the most rewarding committee I ever served on I've talked about this many a times, was 2015 County Affairs. You know, county government has a broad, broad jurisdiction. But that being said, I think that we have a consolidated number of committees. What you're seeing is more meaningful committees, more meaningful participation. There really is definitely no bad committee at this point in time. And one of the things that I would like to highlight is we did create the Doge Committee. I mean, something I was particularly proud of. People often ask, well, okay, well, why is Sunset not doing that? You know, why is this needed in addition to that?

The role of Sunset is to, you know, review every agency every 10 years. Well, there's a lot of things that happen, you know, over a decade that, you know, they're not able to get to. Sunset serves an important role but having a new committee that can go in and look at individual contracts look for waste fraud and abuse this is something that i think is very exciting i've received very much positive feedback from the members it is a committee that even at the end of session i think will have a very big role to play in the interim It's kind of a hybrid of a little bit of state affairs. It's a little bit of a hybrid of general investigating It's gonna work with the inspector general to try to figure out what things are out there so that we can basically Save taxpayer money and give it back to them

I think it's a really really good thing and also I think some of our sunshine and transparency laws Things that I would like to tackle this session will go through that committee It'll be a very interesting committee for this group to pay attention to. I'm very excited about it. It's kind of a force multiplier then, is what you're saying. Yeah, and it is able to look at individual vendors,

contracts, individual things that perhaps you can't get to when you're on a 10-year cycle over and over and over again. So I have high expectations for it. I think it's going to be something that you're going to want to cover, not only through session but over the next two years, and I think we're going to find there's a lot of opportunity to save taxpayers money and with the work that it's doing.

I think I read somewhere, and maybe it was in your release, that committee assignments will be coming very shortly by the end of the month. Rumor out there is it's coming Friday. Any idea when this is being released? It will not be this Friday. I'll tell you that. We are working on it, you know, trying to strike the right balance to make sure that the right committees, you know, have the right people on that. Not just the chair. Everyone thinks, okay, well, you know, look, you know, you go put your chairman in places and then all of a sudden you can publish committees. Well, there's a, just because you're not a chairman doesn't mean you don't have a huge voice on those committees.

To make sure you have the right balance and every member is plugged in, every member has a good opportunity to be where they actually are going to serve the best. Here's what I believe. If you have a member that's excited about a policy area, you want to plug them into that. That is where you want them to actually excel and exceed because we don't have the luxury of having members on the sidelines. There are a lot of people in Texas depending upon us to get results this session. There is a bunch of different areas and so I want to make sure every member is plugged in. I want to make sure every member has productive

work to do so when they're done with this session they feel like it was a you know not only they represented their district but it was fulfilling and they made a difference and it was impactful to the entire state of Texas. Let's move on to some policy you know one of the biggest issues is education savings accounts it's the governor's top issue if it's not on his list of emergency items at the very top I will be surprised. Last session we had we saw kind of an omnibus put out that seemed to be the only way that something could get across the line now maybe things are different you got a much

different freshman class coming in where do you see the starting line on education coming yeah look so I don't know you know if we're married to you know having an omnibus or not, but I will tell you that I believe the Texas House will lead and will do two things this session. I do believe the political winds have shifted. I do believe the votes are there for universal school choice. I do believe this will be the session that it passes. I also believe that as we talk about, you know, our public education system, there's huge momentum to make sure that we're continuing to take care of that. You know, that public education system, there's huge momentum to make sure that we're

continuing to take care of that. You know, that's always the criticism, and I've never been one who's actually, you know, believed it, that you can't do both, that you can't basically take care of public education and invest in it and make sure our teachers are paid a living wage and also do ESAs. I believe the Texas House will prioritize both. You've seen that in the budget that's come out, and I think you'll continue to see us push on making sure that happens. Notably, there's no daylight between you and the Senate in terms of amount of money going to this, right? Yes, as far as the budget, there is no daylight. I mean, certainly, you know, there are going to be different takes, you know, and that's what the process is for.

There's a reason we have two chambers. You know, perhaps maybe the House misses something and people have an opportunity to go to the Senate and say, look, have you thought about this? Have you thought about maybe we should, you know, make sure we push a little bit this direction and then go over to the House and then we get together and we sort it out. But I do think this is the session that it does pass. Another item related to schools that I saw in the budget, much smaller money-wise, but very important school safety measures. I know you've talked about that a lot in sessions past. What does that look like on sine die in your, if, you know, your hope? Yeah, this is one of those issues that certainly, I think, is near and dear to everybody's hearts that's in here. I mean, we all either have children or grandchildren, nieces or nephews or children that we care about.

And the most sacred work I ever did in the Texas House was leading the investigatory committee on the Robb Elementary school shooting. House Bill 3, I thought, was a great bill to try to make sure our schools are safer, that we have an armed officer on every campus to make sure our schools are safer that we have a armed officer on every campus to make sure that if there is another attack there is a deterrent in some way to actually stop it what I think many of my colleagues have heard is there is some issues with funding of it that certainly you know trying to recruit retain and actually have that person and you can also use a school guardian program but to make sure that we are funding school safety so that we have our school

safe. I do see that there will be some additional funding and resources applied to make sure of that. We should be getting some reports out from the school safety center to see how those audits have been. Part of what the school, HP3, did is we decided we were gonna audit every school we were gonna make sure that we got feedback to see how safe they were how much they were adhering to it we're going to learn lessons now that we're actually measuring school safety and so you know until we see some of those reports i can't tell you exactly what else we're going to need on policy but i imagine we're going to want to pay very close attention to that. Another policy item, property taxes. Here we are again, two years later after passing a very large property tax relief plan. But here we are again, having to do this,

another biennium. Is this Band-Aid fix, session after session, is that sustainable or is there a new direction we need to go? So look, we will have, you know, a ways and means committee. We will continue to have hearings looking at, you know, pathways to talking about, you know, tier one M&O and how much of that we can actually fund without property taxes. I am committed to working with all of my colleagues. I'm committed to working with Lieutenant Governor and the Governor of figuring out what is the right amount. Right now, there's no daylight between the House and Senate, but the right mechanism to continue to basically return to taxpayers their money. Now, the money we're collecting is obviously not property taxes, but it is the tax that we hear about the most.

It is the one that people bring up to us as the one they want to continue to see buy-downs with, and we're committed to doing that in conjunction with all of our colleagues. You mentioned the— Thanks, Vance. You mentioned the different mechanisms. The Senate has a $40,000 extension of the homestead exemption. This, of course, was the source of the massive fight last session. House wanted an appraisal cap. Senate did not at all.

We saw multiple special sessions on this. What do you think, if left to your own devices, the perfect mix looks like? Well, it's not left to my own devices, right? I mean, there are, you know, 149 members in the chamber. There is, you know, the Senate, the Lieutenant Governor, the Governor. I'm not going to box us in at this point. I am committed to working with everybody to making sure that we use the best buy-down mechanism that there possibly is. You know, I've been very public in the past about some of my preferred methods. I will continue to, you know, talk about some of those, but I'm going to be deferential to some of the chairs that are going to be appointed, the members who are going to work on it, talking about, you know, actually what is the, you know, tier one M&O,

how much can we buy down over time? What is a pathway to buying it down the most there is? But I want them to be able to do some of that work without me basically just leaning in saying this is the only path. They have to come to the conclusion themselves as well. Is an appraisal cap still on the table or is that gone with the wind? Look, again, I'm going to let all of, you know, the members continue to look at that. Obviously the house let on appraisal caps last session. I argued poor compression. I mean, that was something from 2019.

The Senate has argued for homestead. But I think all of those different avenues need to be debated, discussed, and figure out which way we need to actually push on getting that done because property taxpayers continue to talk to us about wanting some additional state relief in that. You mentioned the lieutenant governor. Y'all obviously have to have a good relationship to get things done, not just you two, but the two chambers. What's it been like since you took over working with the lieutenant governor? We've always had a good, respectful relationship. Twitter is not reality. I want everyone to know Twitter is not reality. I'm not a stranger to the lieutenant governor. I'm not a stranger to the governor. We have worked on major conservative policies in the past well together. I have committed to both of them that we're going to continue to work well together, that I will continue to meet with them and make sure that we're in coordination. I have nothing but respect for both men. And, you know, I think we're going

to have a very productive session. How many special sessions we have? We're not going to have special sessions. There you have it. There's the headline. So next thing I want to ask you is also policy. I asked this on a previous panel, but I want to get your take. What's an under-the-radar issue that you think people need to pay more attention to this session? We need to be promoting small business, period, the end. So much of our economic engine is dependent upon small business owners. Those are the job creators. That's the economic engine.

My dream was always to be able to work for myself. I thought that meant I could actually set my own hours. I'd work less. That's absolutely not true. All of y'all who have your own business, you actually work more hours when you set them. Big business, I'm not against it. I want them to move here.

I think that's phenomenal, but they've got a lot of representation in the form of lobbyists in this building and in this space and around here in Austin. Small business, they can't take off to come down here and advocate for themselves. And I'm not talking about middle-sized business. I'm talking about everyone who has opened up a, rented a stand at your local barber, a doctor or anybody, all up and down. I want to talk about what are the burdens of helping small business get started, to grow, and to be there. And there's a lot into that, right? I mean, I read a great article, we'll have to find it, about two years ago,

that said that somebody wanted to open a coffee shop. They wanted to serve a cup of coffee. And I think it was in Fort Worth. And they said they had to go and fill out 49 different forms at different places and check all these different boxes to make sure that they were able to sell a cup of coffee so that they could basically get revenue to support themselves, their family, create jobs. That's Texas. I mean, there is a real problem in that. Insurance that our small businesses, it's killing them right now on their bottom line.

Trying to find, you know, some of their workforce, making sure that they actually, you know, in high schools, maybe that they're getting some of their career and technology readiness where they can actually get into the workforce and not just be college bound. There's a lot of things that we can do to help promote small business in the state of Texas and that is something you're going to see the Texas house continue to lead on and talk about all session long probably your your biggest bill you've ever passed and correct me if I'm wrong but it's the regulatory consistency act right the Death Star bill cue the music we saw that going into effect there are some lawsuits but

is it working as as you envisioned or is there more that you need to follow up with on it look I'm gonna be again that was a bill that I fought really hard for personally we're gonna let the members take a look at, you know, its implementation at this point in time. But when we talk about this, I don't want to talk about this just from a theoretical level. I mean, everybody in this room is a conservative, I know, or mostly, and we can talk about things in theory. What I want to talk about this is on a practical level. I want to hear from small business owners across this state. I don't care what industry you're in and whether we're talking about licensing, whether we're talking about

regulation, whether we're talking about property insurance, whether we're talking about taxes, whatever it is, what are the hurdles to starting or expanding your business and how can we at Texas better support you in making sure that you're able to grow, add jobs and be the economic engine that we know you are. What kind of reaction did you get from business owners after that bill passed and since implementation? I assume really good, right? We had some very positive reactions, but I think we're going to have to start looking sometimes at the granule level. I mean, right? so if you're in a particular industry and you're faced with different challenges whether it's urban or rural or different what is

it what is it that is being done that government can do to probably get out of the way to make sure that you can grow and get better and that's the type of conversations I want to help facilitate and lead all session long in the Texas House. We just saw a really big election for Republicans, the Trump administration coming in. You know, what do you think that means for the state of Texas? Look, I think in a lot of ways, we are very excited as a state. You know, certainly, you know, we finally have a president that intends to do something on our southern border. I think we're still unpackaging what actually that means of our relationship vis-a-vis the state and the federal government. I'm very excited to see that we have a federal government that is going to take over a lot of the things that really the federal government should have been doing for many, many, many years instead of the state on our southern border. I'm optimistic that maybe that means that we're going to get a refund, you know, for some of this, which can be used for further property tax relief, investments in, you know, water, infrastructure, things of that nature. But I think we are still on a daily basis getting an update about what is that relationship going to look like as they transition there.

But also with an eye to, you know, this is not a permanent thing. So what do we need to do to make sure that, you know, in four years that we still have a presence and we don't have to start over from scratch? We saw the Senate's draft budget and still had $6.5 billion to maintain the current level. I've heard the lieutenant governor talk about possibly being able to reduce that because of the Trump administration coming in. Is that going to happen, or do we really need to just pump the brakes, maintain the current levels to make sure it's all implemented? Yeah, I mean, look, that's what a deliberate body is all about. I mean, we may maintain the current levels. There may be opportunities to basically shift some of it. There may be opportunities to reduce it.

But as the administration, as the Trump administration comes in and we start to find out exactly what their plans are, what they're going to do, we're going to be able to have robust debate about what that actually means, what that actually, you know, could do, and what the state's role is going to be. And so I think that we're going to have answers to that. I just don't know that we have answers to that in late January. It may be March or April before we have a better understanding of what the right mixture really is. What are you most optimistic about for the rest of session? Look, I think that, you know, the things that we have been talking about, you know, I think that we're going to have a very good, you know, budget. I think there's not a lot of difference right now between the House and Senate. I think there's going to be strong, you know,

education bills that come forward, not just ESAs, but also, you know, on the public school side. One of the things that I've been personally excited about that I hear about is having a school discipline bill. You know, when I talk to our educators across the state and I talk about why they are not signing up again or why they're just dropping out from the education profession, it's often not teacher pay. Certainly a lot of places they deserve,

we can't pay them enough to be honest for the job that they're being done, but they don't feel they have the tools available to them in the classroom to make sure that they're respected. And so I do think a good school discipline bill is something that we can work on to help support our teachers. I think there's a lot of opportunity there. Water is going to be a big issue. Infrastructure, I think that we're going to be continuing looking at a long term solution and plan for a lot of those things. You mentioned water from West Texas. How big of a problem hear about, you know, water needs, and sometimes I hear about flooding needs across the entire state. So whatever water plan and water investment we come up with, it has to work for the entire state. It is not fair to pass a plan that is only

thinking of one part of the state and not the entirety of it. So that's going to be the challenge. And I think it's a really important challenge that we have to meet is as we look at investing new resources in long-term water funding, how do we meet the different dynamics and different needs across the entire state? What is a must-pass bill by Sineadye? Look, I mean, there's going to be several, several different priorities. The House is going to continue to prioritize small business and job creation. You're going to see bills coming out in there. Certainly, you know, the governor has prioritized ESAs.

You know, you couple that with teacher pay raises. You couple that with school discipline and some of the things we want to do there. I think those bills are all going to be as a package, a must-pass types of legislation. On your priority list when you, during your acceptance speech, victory speech, you mentioned dealing with threats of terror. And obviously we saw what happened in New Orleans a couple weeks ago. Seems a pretty difficult hill to climb. How do we go about addressing that issue? Yeah, I mean, I think it was a stark reminder. I mean, you know, many of us were, you know, products of, you know, 2001 and some of the wars that, you know, came after that.

But it's a reminder that there are still foreign adversaries that mean to do us harm across the entire country. Their meaning is to do us harm here. So we're going to have to work in conjunction. DPS is a phenomenal, phenomenal state agency. They do a lot of things, but we're going to have to continue to invest in the resources, to be vigilant, to make sure that they have the resources to protect us, because it's not just a nationwide security threat the feds only have to address. It's also here in our backyard, and so we're going to have to continue to look at that. Well, it's kind of tangential also to the southern border. There are stories of those trying to commit acts of terror who have come across the border. What is the feasibility in your mind now with the Trump administration there of actually stopping the flow of illegal immigration? Yeah. So, I mean, look, we are, again, I think that very optimistic that, you know, I think it's beyond optimistic.

I mean, I think I think that this president is committed to our southern border and keeping us safe. I believe that I believe that is absolutely something that we are seeing happening. So to me, I'm very excited for the state to watch him lead on these issues of border security on our southern border. I think that is going to be something that, for the first time in several years, that we can actually look at a federal government doing much of this and how can the state be supportive of it, what do we actually need to know,

but a little bit of it is we've got to unpackage what all of this means because it's just happening and we're standing ready, willing willing and able to be of assistance Last one for you The Dynamics between the two houses has been contentious and it sounds like your goal is to mend bridges Let's put all that behind us and pass the the needs of Texans is that Let's put all that behind us and pass the needs of Texans.

Is that a feasible objective when we have seen the historic enmity between the two chambers? I don't know why it wouldn't be. You know, again, I go back to, and I don't just say this, I have worked with both the lieutenant governor and governor on big issues in the past you know we are not strangers to one another I'm not a new member who's not actually been in those dynamics with them I've told both of them that we are here to work with them on the priorities we're here to you know continue to negotiate I don't think you ever stop you know working and trying to figure out where we can actually find alignment. And so for those who've seen maybe some breakdowns in the past between the House and Senate, we're going to work with them, especially where we can.

Speaker Dustin Burroughs, thank you for joining us. Thank you.