The Texan Podcast - A Conversation with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick — The Texan's 89th Session Kickoff

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

At The Texan’s 89th Session Kickoff, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick joined Senior Editor McKenzie DiLullo to chat about the political landscape — both in Texas and the nation — and the ongoing legislative session.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.

Thank you so much for being here today. We're so appreciative of your time. We want to end the day speaking with Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick. Y'all know him. We're grateful that he has again agreed to join us for our second kickoff event. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, please join me. All right there. All right. There's a little hill there. I almost missed that hill. Governor Patrick, thank you for joining us. We're so appreciative. Absolutely. Absolutely. We are, especially today of all days, which we'll get into in the Senate, but there's a lot going on.

A lot going on. Over in the upper chamber. Can I say something before we start? I just want to thank Connie for starting this business. It's really tough to do, and I thought, golly, this is really going to be hard, and she's just carved out a niche. She's like the Gutfeld of... She's taking on all the big guys and winning. That's what we like to hear.

Well, you just returned from the inauguration, so I want to start with that. You were making the rounds. We saw you meeting even with Elon Musk. Yeah, that was interesting. Yeah, walk us through the inauguration and how it compared to the first inauguration. So I went to the last Bush one, and that was about a foot of snow, so that doesn't compare to anything. You couldn't get around. And then the first one was fun, and it was interesting, but this one had a purpose, and I think you all can see the purpose of the president. He knows exactly what he wants to do, exactly who he needs to get it done, and he's all business and he knows he has four years.

And so he's not wasting an hour. We were talking upstairs before I came down. I heard from him at 9.03 exactly on Christmas morning on a border question. He never stops. So this is all business and they went right to work. I don't know if you saw the tweet I put out. I don't have my phone but the tweet I put out yesterday and I listed everything he's done and this was on Saturday with less than 130 hours. I mean it's incredible what he did just in the first week and

so it was a purposeful event. Elon was interesting. I went in to visit with him last Sunday morning and he had his hat on, the Doge hat, and he said, would you like a hat? And I said, yes. And he took his hat off his head and gave me his hat, which ironically enough, because I have a big head, ironically enough, it fit me. That's where the brain matter stopped. It was just I have the same size shell, but the interior does not operate at his level. But it was just about how much he loves Texas, and I asked him,

you know, he can help us on a number of things. And so, it was a very good meeting. That's wonderful. I want to talk about the Senate's legislative priorities. Let's start with the Dementia Prevention Research Institute. I think that surprised some folks when that announcement came out. Talk to us about the background of where that came from. I hope no one in here has been touched by that in your family.

It's possible you have been touched by it by someone or a friend or a neighbor. I've never put forth an initiative, and this is now my, I'm going into my 18th year, as a senator or lieutenant governor that I've had more positive feedback from in terms of people coming up, including this afternoon, and saying, thank you, my mother had dementia, or I've met a gentleman who his mother and father both have it,

and it's basically bankrupting him. And so we're all aware of it and it's a disease that actually can harm the caregivers more than the person who has it. It's very tough. And so if you look at the secret model, that was 10 years ago. I was in the Senate then. And that was $3 billion over 10 years,

so 300 million a year. So what made that successful after they got a few kinks worked out in the beginning was that researchers, because the only way to get a grant is you have to be in Texas. So researchers moved here from all over the world because they said, this is a 10 year commitment. So if I get a grant to do my research project,

I can come there and I don't have to worry about the legislature ending at the next session. So we attracted some of the best and brightest from around the country and probably from around the world. And so we have a surplus. We have to be very careful with the surplus. We're not always gonna have a surplus. We did last time, we have this time.

This time is considerably smaller when you actually look at the dollars. But we have the opportunity with the surplus. What we should do is only spend it or most of it on one-time issues, not an ongoing, because surplus is not always going to be there. So I thought this is a perfect time, whether it's out of the rainy day fund or the surplus, we have the money to do this and Texas you know we have some of the finest doctors the finest researchers the finest hospitals in the in the world here in Texas and we can attract people to you know copy what we've done on on cancer and that is try to you know obviously love to find a cure but prevention and and then care as you go through it. Because there's just not a lot

of help out there for people that suffer this in their family. Let's move on to the other Senate priorities as well. Talk to us about what you're prioritizing this session in the upper chamber and why that is. So school choice is Senate Bill number two. We have passed it in the Senate, I think now seven times. We passed it in 2015, 2017. We never got a hearing in the House. I think we passed it four or five times last time. And it didn't get a vote on the last day. And we know what that caused.

That caused Greg Abbott to get a little rather exercise about that issue. And rightfully so. And 15 members aren't back because of it. And so we're gonna, in gonna fact we had a hearing today it's probably still going on we'll pass the bill out next Wednesday and I think it will be on his emergency orders and we'll pass it out if it is and and then we'll move on. And the House needs to pass the bill. Bottom line.

No excuses anymore. We'll certainly touch more on that in a bit. Of course, after the election, you increased the new members in the Senate. But you increased the Republican margin by one member, Senator Adam Hinojosa from Senate District 27. Talk to us about how that affects the Senate's trajectory this session. So if you look at the election this past November, it was really astounding in Texas. First of all, President Trump received 500,000 more votes than either Greg Abbott or myself have received

in a statewide election. He got around a million five. There's a little story in that too, because Ted Cruz got about a million, which is what Abbott and and I'm usually around nine hundred thousand or so so that's kind of where the benchmark was so Trump gets five hundred thousand more so when all these stories were out there last fall about is Ted Cruz in trouble I was we did a lot of fundraising with the president some events and on one of the trips his staff said when you get on the plane he's

gonna ask you is Ted in trouble and I said said, okay. So he asked me, and I said, Mr. President, are you going to win Texas? And basically, he said, if I don't, you need to leave the country as his campaign chair. Not that, you know, I'm like the Maytag guy. You know, being his campaign chair in Texas is an easy job. You know, but we raise a lot of money. I said, well, here's the deal, Mr. President. You're going to win Texas. There is not a voter in Texas, not one, who will vote for you and cross over and vote for a Democrat. But Ted may not get as many votes as you get because there are the, quote, Trump voters. And so imagine, and it turned out that way, there were 500,000 people that walked in and voted for him and turned around and walked out.

That's the difference. It wasn't that they're upset with Ted Cruz. It's just, I'm here for Trump. So we recognize we've got to turn those voters into Republican voters long term. So I don't know where I was. You asked me something. What was the question? Basically, the Senate's trajectory after Adam Hinojosa.

Oh, Adam Hinojosa. So we won, I think think 31 out of 32 statewide judicial races and I want you to think about that we flipped 31 Democrat judges appeals court judges and that was done by by raising 18 million dollars to help get that done and we win Adam Hinojosa in the Valley. And what's significant of that, when I came in, I wanted to broaden our party and bring Hispanics into the Texas Senate. So Pete Flores was the first ever, and then now Adam Hinojosa.

If you would have said five years ago that we could elect a Republican in the Valley in the Texas Senate, that's a million, you know, each senator represents a million people. That's a big deal. You might be able to win a House seat or a Congressional seat, but a Senate seat is bigger than that. And so that's a big deal because Adam, who's terrific, he will build on that and he'll get more people to change parties, or he didn't change parties, he's always been a Republican, to change parties or more people to run. And so that was a really big win for us. And then Brett Hagenboe took Drew Springer's spot up in the Fort Worth area,

and so a Naval Academy grad, so he'll be great. So we have two new senators. I want to zoom in on the Trump voter question quickly, because we saw a huge red wave in so many ways in Texas after this last November. I'm curious your perspective on how many of those voters of a different presidential candidate, in Texas specifically, is on the ballot in four years. What that looks like. Do you think this margin is maintained? Or do you think there's room for that to kind of recede back a little bit?

Well, it depends on who it is. Obviously, if it's Ted Cruz or if it's Greg Abbott, it both may run for president. Either one of those will perform very well in Texas. We're going to be a red state for a long time, but we can't take it for granted. We have to go out there and work every vote. If you look back, one of the reasons that the Democrats

and I was happy that they made this mistake, they spent $100 million supporting Colin Allred, who had no chance to win. Like I said, there was no chance to win. Trump was going to win Texas, and no one was going to vote for Trump and cross over and vote for Allred. And so if you look back, the Democrats looked at 18 and said, oh, that race was very close with Beto O'Rourke. But President Trump wasn't on the ticket. So he didn't have that carry weight. And the truth is, we all know that Beto

was a total empty suit. I mean, really, just a total empty suit. He didn't know what he was talking about. But he had a little charisma that people liked. And I was shocked. You know, I'd go through certain neighborhoods, and I'd see Greg Abbott signs and Beto signs. And it didn't compute to me.

So that was closer. That was a unique one-off. And they thought that that's the way that Texas was heading, but it wasn't. And so Ted's team ran a better campaign the second time around. He raised the money, and President Trump was on the ballot. And even if President Trump had not been on the ballot, Ted Cruz was going to win anyway. But that's what happened.

Let's talk about the THC ban, the product ban, that you've spoken about before the legislative session. Walk us through a little bit of just clarifying points. This is a wholesale ban, a partial ban. We talked about the compassionate use. Walk us through what this would look like. So a couple of years ago, Mitch McConnell, not anyone's favorite in this room, I'm sure. Mitch McConnell passed a federal law basically to benefit the farmers in Kentucky to sell hemp and

the THC from the hemp. And so Texas farmers and ranchers said, look, it's a federal law. They can sell it in Texas. So if it's going to be sold in Texas, we should have the ability to sell our own hemp, not to make drugs like are being sold now. But there were some very entrepreneurial chemists,

apparently, who figured a way around that law and this is going to shock you if you haven't heard my comment on this but in the last 18 months 8,000 stores have opened up selling THC and candy and anything you can imagine, multiple times what you would buy on the street from a drug dealer. And there's no age restriction on it. So your kids or grandkids can't go in the store and buy cigarettes or alcohol, but they can go into any one of these shops and buy a THC product, which by the way, a lot of these stores are opened up around schools and they have products that appeal to kids.

And a mother came up to me and told me about it probably six or seven months ago, and then more and more people told me about it, and I started doing some investigation, and then I found out that HHSC, basically you register, 4,000 people registered, and I guess on average they open two stores each. So they're everywhere. You haven't seen them. And so Delta 8 and Delta 9 are problematic and Charles Perry will carry the bill and I hope the House will support it because it's impacting young people as well as adults. You're buying things you have no idea what's in it. And it's the milligrams.

I was talking to someone that said, yeah, the THC count is there, but you go in there and sell a candy bar that has 100 milligrams. So anyway, that's why. I want to talk about the, you know, some Republicans like Sid Miller have remained a little bit opposed to this proposal. He was for it. Okay, yes. So walk us through what's your message to those who kind of remain in that camp?

I really don't have a message for those who are opposed to that. It's bad news. That's a message. We basically have legalized, not directly, you know, we talked about we're not going to legalize marijuana in Texas, and they've gone through this loophole and we're going to close it. I think Sid Miller is still supportive of it. Sid's a friend. I think he said, well, maybe we need to look at this or measure it and regulate it. Right now, I think our view is it just needs to be banned.

Let's talk property taxes. We can't sit down with you and not talk property taxes. There's some daylight between the House and the Senate on this issue. Surprise, surprise. Well, maybe not. But maybe not. Walk us through where you think the two chambers might meet on this issue at the end of session. Great question, Mackenzie. So, let me walk you through this so that all of you really have

these numbers down. I'm a numbers guy. So, for every billion dollars that we cut property taxes by for compression, and compression is reducing the amount of the tax rate, okay, we're buying that down for you as a homeowner. For every billion you save $29. That's a lot of money to save you $29, Pete. A lot of money. For every billion we put in a homestead exemption,

you save $110. So the House has a proposal now for $3 billion of compression. That would save you $87. And we have a proposal for about $3 billion for a homestead exemption, and that will save you $330. So if we're going to spend $3 billion, would you rather have $330 savings or $87? Secondly, a homestead exemption is voted on by you in the Constitution. It can never be taken back.

Compression is not in the Constitution. So anytime we have a downturn and we need money, a legislature in the future could just pull all have a downturn and we need money, a legislature in the future could just pull all that back and your taxes would go up. And what people don't realize is, and I know there may be some people in this room, so I don't mean to offend anybody, but the idea that we can do away with all school taxes

through compression just doesn't work. The cost to that is about $39 billion. $39 billion on top of what we're already spending. We're around the $50 billion mark if you're all in homestead exemption and compression. We already have compression in our school formulas. We already have compression in the bill that we passed in 2019. The bill in 2019 alone will increase compression by $3 billion just by itself. So we don't, I'm not anti the House.

It's not like our plan is better than their plan. But last session, the reason 31 senators stood behind me and said, we're not going to give in on homestead exemption is because when we gave you $100,000, and if you're a senior, $110,000, your tax cut was about $1,400. If we'd gone with the House plan of all compression, it would have been $700. So it's just not, the math doesn't work. And compression, we've already done the math. This year compression cost us, I know some people in the media here, so I'm repeating this so they can write it down. This year compression cost us $2.7 billion. If we do nothing in five sessions, that cost us $25 billion because it just keeps going

up and up and up and up and up and up and up. So we have to get a control of that. Compression's good. We've done a lot. We just can't afford to do more. Well, let's talk about homestead exemptions. Do you foresee this being something that the legislature then comes back each and every session and does this and adds in perpetuity a homestead exemption for each session?

Is that sustainable? Nothing is sustainable if you do too much too soon, but you can do a lot over time. So when I came in in 2015, and I'd always been, I ran on property tax relief back in 2007 as a senator, but until I was lieutenant governor, I didn't have the votes to get it done. Lieutenant governor helps you get a few votes. And so the homestead exemption was $15,000. It had been $15,000 forever. I can't remember what it was. 15. We raised it to 25

in 15. We raised it to 40 in 19. And we raised it to 70 in 23. The House raised it to 100 and they decided they didn't want to do it. It was just all for show. Now, that guy's gone, so Dustin Burroughs is the new guy. We're giving him a chance to be successful. I'm not happy that the Democrats picked our speaker again, but I'm going to give him a chance. He says he's going to be the most conservative speaker ever. So, you know, that would be a great thing for all of us. So I'm going to do everything I can to help him succeed and we'll see what happens. So we can always do a little bit more homestead and always decrease the home tax. But if we pass our bill this time and the House agrees, we'll pass it. It'll be 140 and 150 for seniors. So now you're right now you may

not know this, your appraisals for the most part don't matter anymore. You get your bill in the spring it used to be if your appraisal went up 8% your tax bill went up 8%. We stopped that in 2019 by putting a lid on cities and counties. They can't raise their revenues more than three and a half percent, school districts more than two and a half percent. So if you'll look at if you go home tonight if you have a house a homestead or if you're watching look at your appraisal last spring look at your tax bill and you'll see that your school taxes are down now about 41 on your m o which is the biggest part of your of your um property tax bill so we can keep cutting that down incrementally can we go 30 and forty thousand dollars a leap every year it just depends on our funding we have i want to talk then about the house mentioned speaker

what do you make of the beginning of the legislative session over in that chamber so i'm going to say positive things because i want him to succeed okay uh he's very bright might be the smartest guy over there um i won't compare him to people in the past, but he might be the smartest guy over there for sure. Dennis Bonham was pretty smart. And so my issue was not with, I didn't care who the speaker was. And the governor and I both put out the same note. We didn't care who the speaker was. We thought it should be the caucus nominee.

To my knowledge, and there may be one other state that I don't know about, but in the history of the country, in the history of the country, only one state, Alaska, has allowed the minority party to pick the speaker of the majority party. Maybe there's one more we've missed.

That's not the way politics work. The Democrats lost the election. We won all those judges, we won everything, and now we have the Democrats picking our Republican Speaker. In the past, it was all done behind the curtain. So there were Republicans in the past who didn't want to vote for a Speaker like that,

but once the Speaker had, or the Speaker candidate had 76 votes, because they had enough Democrats to go with a few Republicans, then everyone capitulated and said, okay, we'll vote for the speaker. So it was like 147 to 3 or something. So people never knew what was happening. This time, and I put out a tweet on these 52, I give them praise for standing their ground and saying it's not about the candidates, it's about the process. They picked David Cook. They didn't pick Dustin. And they stood there and voted for David Cook. So think about this. Dustin Burroughs was elected with 52 out of 88 Republicans voting against him, but all but nine Democrats voting for him, and nine just didn't vote at all.

They hit white light. So I just wish in Texas, of all places, as red as we are, that we could get to the point where 76 Republicans out of 88 would pick the speaker. That needs to happen. And I understand, and we've got some leaders here, right, who know this. We have some, it's, let's say, let's say any of our Republicans got to 70 or 68. Okay, if you go get five or six Democrats to help you over the line, okay, then at least you've been elected by majority of Republicans, the vast majority. But you can't have a few Republicans and all the Democrats. And so what that tells me is, you know, Dustin's going to

have a tough job because they elected him. I represent and Greg Abbott represents the five million people, all of you in this room, who voted for us. So that's who I owe my election to, and that's who I share a common belief with as a conservative and conservatives. Otherwise, I wouldn't have gotten elected or Abbott wouldn't have gotten elected. But the speaker, whoever it is, who gets elected by all the Democrats and a minority of Republicans, you know, it's just obvious. And the rules last week, you know, there was this, you know, well, we don't want any Democrat chairs. Well, there are no Democrat chairs, but obviously the Democrats like what happened

because not one of them voted against the rules. And some people think they're more powerful now than ever before because vice chairs have been given all this power. If he can pull it off, if he's the Houdini of the House, and he can pass all the conservative bills that we want, then I'll pat him on the back and say, job well done. But man, he's put himself in a tough spot. And by the way, I talked to both of them, David and Burroughs, like a month before the election, and I said, Dustin, if this was Cook trying to make this play and you had been the pick, I would be telling David Cook the same thing.

I wasn't picking between the two. It would just be nice for one session to have Republicans pick their own speaker and not the Democrats. You know, when I came in as lieutenant governor, I got rid of the 21-vote rule, the senators' vote rule and the rules, because the Democrats were running the Senate when I was there. You had, you never had more than 20 Republican Senators. It took 21 votes to bring a bill to the floor, only 16 to pass it. So the Democrats ran the Senate and I bucked that for eight years and I made some headway,

but I couldn't get enough votes to turn it over. In fact, I lost my first vote on the floor my first day, 30 to one. And basically they told me to sit down and shut up. And they said I'll never pass a bill that session. And two weeks later I put in God we trust in the chamber and they said okay, I guess we gotta let him sign that bill. Who's gonna be against God? And they said well it's terrible when Dan's the lieutenant governor, he's taking all the Democrat speakers.

It's not punishing Democrats. The Republicans won. We won. And so if I allow six Democrats to be chairman, that's six Republicans that can't be. It's like all these vice chairs over in the House. Think about this. Think about this matter. There are 30 vice chairs, all Democrats.

There are 30 vice chairs, all Democrats. There are 62 Democrats. So that means 30 Democrats, 32 Democrats don't have a chair, vice chair or chair, right? But there are 88 Republicans. And that means there are gonna be 30 Republicans who are chairs, that means 58 Republicans aren't gonna be vice chairs.

So there's 58 Republicans in the majority party who don't have a chair and only 32 Democrats who don't. That's bad math. That's just bad math. So I hope he pulls it off. Look, here's the deal. Look, you all here are very involved. The average voter out there, they don't care about the rules. They don't care about it. They just want us to do the job. And it's just that when this happens in the House session after session, it all started with Joe Strauss when it was 12 Republicans and 64 Democrats. You talk about an embarrassment. But ever since then, it's been this way.

And I hope one day it changes. Walk me through, as the leader of the upper chamber, how you plan on navigating this relationship with this new speaker. A couple of days before the election, you were very critical, saying, hey, there are some concerns I have about this candidate. So how, going into this session, do you plan on navigating? Are breakfasts coming back? Yeah, well, we're having breakfast tomorrow.

Look at that. There we go. We're all going to Chick-fil-A, I think, or somewhere. You know, if you go to Chick-fil-A on Tuesdays, the last Tuesday of the month, I found out today three mini chicken sandwiches on the last Tuesday. We were driving in today. A lady said it's $1.72. I said, $1.72? I just got two orders of the mini chickens, four each. It's $1.72. Why is that? It's quite a deal. So now I know what to do with the last Tuesday of every month. So look, this is how you navigate it.

My job is to pass conservative legislation out of the Senate. And then my job is to do the best I can to help them pass it out of the House. And my job is, if they kill bills, to let everybody know that the bills were killed. My job is to give him an opportunity to succeed and I'm going to do that. But if it doesn't work I'm not going to sit quietly. See here's what's happened. This is different and I told Dustin this. In the past like I said no one knew really what was going on that the Speaker had mostly Democrat votes to get elected. But now everybody does.

So any time that a bill goes down, they're going to say, aha, aha, or it gets weakened and watered down, aha. And people are going to know about it. It's going to be very hard. And again, Dustin's very smart. I think he is a conservative. But he's put himself in an awkward position, and really there are no excuses.

We don't want to hear later, well, gosh, you know, I couldn't, I tried. Oh, my God. Well, you asked for it. And Brian Birdwell, who I love, has a great saying. When you want it bad enough, sometimes you get it bad. So I hope it doesn't work out that way, because I want him to be successful. That's good for all of us.

Well, in terms of succeeding in the House, of course, school choice is a part of that conversation for you, for the governor, the speaker. Obviously, after the election and seeing a whole slew of new House members, specifically, come into the legislature who are in favor of school choice, in varying degrees, but in favor of school choice. In your mind, what do you think the potential of passing in favor of school choice in varying degrees, but in favor of school choice. In your mind, what do you think the potential of passing some sort of school choice bill out of the House, a strong bill out of the House looks like? I can't calculate the odds on that.

I just don't know. You know, you had a hardcore group of Republicans who said no the last time, and the Democrats are no, so he's going to have to figure that out. If you had all Republicans vote for you, and a few Democrats maybe, you have a better chance of passing a stronger, cleaner bill. But that's his job. That's not my, I mean, you know, that's his job. Well, let's talk about the Senate.

The ESA bill is making its way through the committee process today. I want to walk through a little bit, and it's still ongoing based on my knowledge. I want to talk a little bit about the fiscal note that we're seeing right now. The $1 billion for the first biennium, and then I believe it's up to $6 billion in the second. No, it would be I'd have to go back and look. I don't want to be wrong, but I think it's $2 billion in the second, right? It's $1 billion for the second year. Correct.

Yeah. But the fiscal note does have it going up to $6. Okay. But that's the policy. Yeah, it would be two. I don't know where they came up with their six. That would be incorrect. So it's something.

So these are numbers, you know, and I've been doing a couple of interviews on this, and I met with about 300 superintendents of rural and mid-sized schools, and I told them this number. I said, this idea that Republicans want to undermine public education is just a joke. Public education in Texas, 5.5 million kids are in public schools, K-12. That's 5.1 in regular schools and 400,000 in public charters. Total, 5.5 million kids are in public schools, K through 12. That's 5.1 in regular schools and 400,000 in public charters. Total, 5.5, with a budget of $39 billion. Over here, we have a budget of $1 billion,

and somewhere around, what's the latest total of kids? 80,000? Somewhere in that range, about 80,000, depending if you give them $8,000 or $10,000? Somewhere in that range, about 80,000, depending if you give them 8,000 or 10,000 per child. So 39 billion, 1 billion. And this 1 billion didn't come out of education, it came out of other dollars.

5.5 million kids against 80,000. There's just no way that school choice is ever going to even impact public education. You have to remember there was a time in Texas 30 years ago or so, 40 years ago, that homeschooling was illegal. We can't have homeschooling. Oh my god, we can't have that. It's gonna ruin public schools. Parents aren't smart enough to teach their kids. I mean really that was

it. Went to court and then charter schools came along. Oh my gosh, we can't have charter schools. Charter schools are gonna come to public education. Meantime, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, more and more and more money to it. And now it's just this is the latest, oh my gosh, you know, the sky's going to fall. So we're going to pass it. It's good. Sixty-five percent of independents want it, about 46 percent of Democrats, last poll I saw, and 80 percent of Republicans want it and and it's gay it's gay it's geared to children with disabilities I've been I've been on the board of being angel I'm now a meritus member but since 1988

and be an angel we support children with disabilities and I've I don't say this in a braggadocious way but just to let you know my commitment they say say I've raised $25 million for them since 1988. We care about these kids. I know about these kids. And some schools are well-equipped to handle your child with a disability. Some are not. So you ought to have the right, if you have a child with a disability, whether it's a mild dyslexia or a severe case, because you know our public schools have to teach every child no matter what the disability is. Well, if that school can't help your child, you ought to have a right to go somewhere else. And how about then it's geared to children in failing schools? Most of our schools are good in Texas. We have some great ones, and we have bad ones. We have 9,000 campuses,

365,000 teachers, 1,200 school districts. Trust me, they're not all great. Okay? We're not trying to bring down the public school system. But the ones who are failing our kids, you know, they say, well, give us some more money. Gosh, we've done. Since 2015, as lieutenant governor, I've signed off on a budget to add about $38 billion to public education, counting the property tax cuts and everything else we've done, $38 billion. And so this is not hard.

Just let the parents have that opportunity. And it's universal also, so there's a part of the bill that any parent can apply. And so it's a good bill, and we passed it enough that I almost know it by heart. I was going to ask, how many times is that version of school choice? I think it was four times last time. Four times? I mean, we've tweaked it was four times last time. Four times. I mean, we've tweaked it a little bit this time,

but Brandon Creighton's done a great job on it. Yeah, very similar, Bill. Let's talk about the definition of universal then. The speaker earlier today said that he believes he does have the votes in the House to pass universal school choice. But that term is thrown around a lot. In your mind, what qualifies as a universal school choice any child any child any parent can avail themselves of the program we focus on children with

disabilities we focus on children failing schools but we also open it up for any child to apply because that would be full universal school choice but look let's all face it why do we want school choice we want school choice. But look, let's all face it. Why do we want school choice? We want school choice to create better competition, make schools better, and we want to get kids out of failing schools. And look, you could even have an A or B school where your child is, but maybe that child's getting bullied. Maybe that child just doesn't fit that school. You have a right to, you know, your child doesn't have to have a disability. Your child doesn't have to be in a failing school to avail the program. And it'll be a lottery system like the charter school is.

And the other thing, across the country, I think there are now 33 states, this would be the biggest school choice plan in the country with 80,000 or so. Only about 3% of the parents opt into school choice. Number one, most schools are good. Number two, kids don't want to leave their friends. So it's not like, oh, my gosh, everyone's going to leave. They're not going to leave. And there's not enough money in it for everyone to leave.

Public schools will always be the, you know, our budget this year, I think education is 51% or 52%. Healthcare is 33% roughly. That's 83%, 84%, 85% of our whole budget. It's two subjects. The Bible says where your treasure is is where your heart is also. So if our treasure is mostly in public education, that's where our heart is. We've asked this question a few times today.

Can I steal that water? Of course, absolutely. Is that yours or done? No, this should have been on your side. Oh, there is one there. I'm sorry, I never looked to my left. Total blind spot in my life. Okay. Oh, this is better. This is right wing water. Connie, did you put it up right? It says right wing. It says right wing water. We've asked this question a few times today, but I'm curious in your mind, is there a kind of under

the radar policy issue that you would, that would be a success in your mind to work its way through the process that even could be a big policy fight, could be but something that you kind of want to see there are a couple of those and if I tell you about them they won't be under the radar that's true somebody back there's gonna write about it what are you trying to do here okay well there's a couple of things a couple of ideas number one we have a cap on the rainy day fund and right now we're gonna hit the cap of about 24 billion dollars right now this is we're gonna to hit the cap of about $24 billion. Right now we're going to get to the cap. Once we get to the cap, it becomes a waterfall.

The money rolls over into the regular budget, which means you can spend that money. Once upon a time when our budget was $100 billion less or $150 billion less or whatever the number was, $10, $15, $20 billion in the rainy day fund was enough. But our budget now, our total budget is $332 billion. If we have a really black swan event, heaven forbid we have one again, or a downturn in the economy one day. I was on finance in 2011 when we had a $20 billion shortfall, and it was kind of scary. So we passed the bill last session,

and it didn't make it in the House. I could just hit one of those, pull that string. What was those other strings? It didn't, failed in the House, failed in the House. What were those dolls you pissed? Chatty Cathy. Yeah, just pulled my string. Killed in the House, killed in the House, killed in the House,

killed in the House. Anyway, we need, I don't know what made me think of that. I have eight grandchildren. They and I buy all kinds of toys. So we need to raise that cap. In fact, we need to take the cap off. We need to save as much money as we can. We need to kind of have a sovereign fund.

In fact, I think our bill is going to name it the sovereign fund. We need to have a lot of money in reserve. And I think the House should pass that. That's just a smart thing to do. The other thing is, and I don't know how all of you will feel in this room, so you may all say, no, I don't like that, Dan. So I'll find out. I'm going to poll it right here. I think in elections, if there's three or more people in the race, that you should be able to win with 45% of the vote and not 50 because we have so many runoff elections. It's hard to keep volunteers.

It's hard to keep raising the money again. It's hard for people to remember to come back and show up. And we have more. I love that people are running for office. Everybody should run. But in some of these races, you have five, I love that people are running for office. Everybody should run, but in some of these races, you have five, six people. No one can get to 50% if you get to four or five

or six people, and so this is a tremendous cost. People get worn out with elections, and so that's one thing that I think potentially we should look at is, because it's very hard to get to 50 if there's three or more people in the race. Just impossible. So. It's just impossible. Close primaries. Pardon?

I'm in favor of the close primaries, actually. I don't know if that will pass, but I think, you know, I'm not going to look. He's gone, so I'm not going to go back and refer to that. But, you know, 3,000 Democrats or so crossed over to steal a Republican primary. And so I think, you know, but we don't register by party in the state. And so a lot of people are going to say, no, I don't want to register by party. I want to be an independent. So I'm open to it. I'm surely not against it, but I'll see what people say. What do y'all think about that? What do y'all think about it? What about the, if it's three or more people in the race, 45 instead of 50?

No. No, you don't like that? No. Let the parties filter who goes on primary ballot. Two people only. No, you can't do that. You can't do that. No, no, no, no.

You can't do that. That's an end of democracy there. Oh, my gosh. In this room, in the Texan room. Connie, what kind of followers do you have? I think that subscription should be canceled today. Anyway, okay, let's next. We're not clipping that part.

No, we're not going to that part. Yeah, let's not clip that part. We're not picking the people. Hey, look, when I ran for the Senate the first time, I was the fourth person in the race, and they said I couldn't win. They said, he can't win. He's the radio TV guy. We got 70% of the vote in the first round.

They said, well, of course he's the radio TV guy. We got 70% of the vote in the first round. They said, well, of course he was the radio TV guy. And then I ran for lieutenant governor, and they said, he can't win. Because I had three, you know, Dewhurst, Patterson, and Staples. They were all strong guys. And he can't win, and then we got 45% in the first round. And they said, well, okay, he's the radio TV guy. It sort of worked out that way. Yeah.

I should tell you all a funny story, but... Want to hear a funny story? I have two more questions after your funny story. Okay, so when I ran for lieutenant governor in 15, we were just... It was the Ted Cruz model. We just wanted to get in the runoff with Dewhurst, and then we thought we could win.

Never thought we'd finish first. And so the polling came in, like, with five days to go, six days, seven days to go, whatever. And it showed us a little ahead that we could actually finish first. And so I was campaigning in Fort Worth, and I was staying at my brother-in-law's, sister-in-law's house that night and I, earlier that day, we had a call with my team, campaign team, and my media director, my social media director said, Senator, I made a mistake today. He said, I tweeted out that Dan Patrick believes marriage is between a man and a man. And I said, I won't mention his name, let me think of a name, Mo. Hey Mo.

It's okay, it's okay. I said you just left out the woe. He said yeah I was typing so quick I just put man instead of woman. And I said, okay, don't worry about it. So I come home that night, and there's a note on the refrigerator in my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's home, and it says, watch the tape shows. Well, what tape shows? I watched Jimmy Fallon, Conan O'Brien.

Who's the other guy on at night? Who's the guy that's got on ABC that nobody likes now? Jimmy Kimmel. They all did, I was in the monologue of every show. And I think it was Jimmy Kimmel who said, if the Democrats can't beat that poor blankety blank, picture of me up there, then they can't beat that poor blankety blank. Picture me up there. Then they can't beat anybody and I sat there I said you know I forgave him I just thought it was a little

mistake I didn't think it was that big of a deal. You know been working a year and a half on this and turned out we finished with 45% in the first round and Dewhurst had 23 and everybody everybody was shocked, including us. So the end of the story is all the young people in the social media world thought he did that on purpose. They thought it was the most genius and brilliant thing that anyone had ever done

because I got coverage. That's worth millions of dollars. Millions of dollars. And so I don't know if he did that or not, but it all worked out. Look where you are now? Yeah. I know you're not a betting man, but I want your over-under. My over-under?

On whether or not we're going to have one special session. Well, you know, I met with Dustin today, and I said, Dustin, our goal should be to get out of here in a long time. It'd be nice. You know, it's really, look, it's really tough on families in the House. You tend to be younger members. But it's tougher on the Senate too. You know, we were there until December last year. And the session before that, we were there until October because the Democrats left and went to Washington. And, you know, a lot of people, you know, we make $600 a month, myself included. I'm okay. But for those members who have a job or have a business or just mama says,

hey, you said this was a part-time gig, or papa said, hey, this is not a part-time gig. You're gone all year. So I hope we get out there on time. But if school choice doesn't pass, Governor Abbott, and I will back him 100%, he'll have us back there until the next session if it takes him. So my message to the House, get school choice passed, let's get it out of the way and move on. There you go.

If they can. He says he can. So I'm going to help him all I can. In your latest fundraising Hall you believe cash on hand was thirty three point five million dollars yes sizable amounts I think second only to Governor Abbott in Texas history correct me if I'm wrong yes because he's a he's a fundraising machine that guy he can do it well thirty three point five million dollars is no slump showing in there at

our last event you made headlines when you said you'd run for reelection inlection in 2026. Are you staying the course? Oh, yes, absolutely. Look, it's hard to raise money. I spent a lot of time on it, so I wouldn't raise the money if I wasn't running. You know, this is somebody, a reporter asked me this today. I love what I do. I have a great Senate. I have a Christ-centered Senate. I have 20 great Republicans I work with, really good people. You know, I believe that Texas has the strongest economy. We lead in so many things. You know, we've helped, we've done all we could to secure the border against Joe Biden, and now we have a partner in the White House. Texas is the place where everyone wants to be and I want to continue that on. I won't be there forever, but I will run in 26 and I'm in great health and I really enjoy what

I'm doing and I'm blessed to do it. So yeah. Well, Governor Patrick, thank you for being here. We so appreciate your time, especially at the beginning of session. Thank you all. Thank you, Mackenzie. Thank you.