Inside Texas Politics | State rep. says Gov. Abbott's executive order is an 'immigration stunt'

This morning, Texas congressman Michael mccall on the results of a three year investigation and why it has taken so long to get accountability in Afghanistan. Dallas City Council set aside $11 billion to fully fund the police and fire pension councilman Chad West. Though on what it will cost taxpayers, Governor Abbott ordered Texas hospitals to report the immigration status of patients. State rep Chris Turner on the politics of this and 1/4 Republican now running to be Speaker of the Texas House. So what does the math look like in the effort to unseat Dae Flan inside Texas politics with Jason Whiteley starts now. Good Sunday morning. I'm Jason Whiteley a lot to get to. But let's start with the top political headlines happening here in our state. We're getting a better idea of what the next legislative session is going to look like in Austin. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick revealed a second set of issues that he wants senators to study. One of them is a potential law to prevent protesters from covering their faces with masks. Another is to recommend ways to remove non citizens from voter rolls and prevent them from registering to vote something by all accounts. That is very rare in Texas. All of that though. Still red meat for Republicans living in Dallas is about to get more expensive on Wednesday. Dallas City Council is going to vote on raising fees for a number of services, water bills, trash service, both going up by a couple of bucks each per month and the 911 fees on your phone bill are going up by almost $5 a month. All told the increased fees are going to raise more than $57 million in new revenue for Dallas and the Texas Supreme Court said that Dallas must remove three items from its November ballot. A conservative led group called Dallas Hero got three charter amendments on the ballot in Dallas requiring the city to hire more police change the way the city manager gets paid and let citizens sue officials while city council added its own three, that would invalidate those if passed. The Supreme Court said those three the council added will confuse voters and they must go. Let's start this morning with accountability in Afghanistan. A Texas congressman has spent three years now trying to get to the bottom of why the US withdrawal from there was so botched. He just released his findings. But the question many are asking is why now less than two months before the election? That's one of our questions for Congressman Michael mccaul. He's the chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee and a Republican who represents parts of Central Texas. Mr Chairman. Welcome back to the program. Let's get right to it here. One of the most interesting parts of this report I think is uh you guys said as, as the US withdrew troops in 2021 it did not simultaneously withdraw diplomats and their families which left them exposed there. That was a so-called fatal flaw in President Biden's plan to leave Afghanistan is what the report concludes. The State Department is charged by federal law by Congress to initiate an evacuation plan. Uh It's called a neo. Um They continued to refuse to implement a plan until the day. The Taliban actually overran Kabul by that time, it was too late. Jason. I'm not trying to score political points even though I'm being accused of that today. Um I want to get to the truth like a, a federal prosecutor would, I didn't make arbitrary conclusions. I weighed the facts, evidence came to uh an investigation that's leading up, you know, to the top but the, the bottom line here and goal is to make sure this never happens again. You know, we had Saigon, we had Kabul, we had an office to deal with this, that the Biden administration shut down prior to the Taliban takeover. So we want to legislate an emergency evacuation plan that everybody knows who's in charge because nobody knew who was in charge at the time. Uh The military had a very different objective than the White House and State state had the objects of politics, the optics of everything's fine. It's going to plan. You're not to see helicopters like Saigon. And we know it just didn't end up that way. You said this is not about politics but why release it now just two months before the election. And I get asked that a lot. This was not my timing. I didn't choose this by design. Uh The timing is a result of not being able to get documents, witness testimony, having to serve subpoenas. It took me eight months to get Jens soI to testify. Secretary Lincoln is still refusing to testify even though I've served a subpoena and I will threaten him with contempt. They have stonewalled this investigation in the hopes that it would go after the election. So they wouldn't have to deal with this. What they didn't know is that I had enough already to publish a report, but I would have preferred to have, you know, deliver this a year ago. I didn't have the evidence. Mr Chairman, you said you hope this leads to legislative and policy solutions. Is there a piece of legislation, a bill that you would present or you think is going to come out of this that would prevent such a disaster from ever happening again? Absolutely. I mean, number one, the you can't have this uh bifurcation of military and state, you know, they need to be integrated. Diplomatic security corps needs to be reporting straight to the Secretary of State. We need a uh legislation that provides direct guidance as to who's in charge what needs to be done when the plan needs to be executed. Uh All those things were missing, there was no plan and that's why you saw what you saw. I talked to the secretary about this very extensively and I think this is one area of good faith where I do think I can work with him to try to come up with legislation to ensure this never happens again. Mr Chairman, I always appreciate the time. Thank you, sir. Thanks Jason. And let's bring in the round table to talk about the politics of this. Bug Kennedy is here from the Fort Worth Star Telegram James Barragan is with us from Austin, the Texas Tribune there. And Bernardine Stepto, the political producer at W FAA in Dallas. But Secretary of State Anthony Blinken subpoenaed to testify this week to the House Foreign Affairs Committee there. He says this is not about politics. What is it you think? Well, I think this is about, if you saying he says that, that the delay is not about politics. Uh obviously, it's about politics on everybody's side. You know, if uh if the chairman didn't want to release it right before the election, he could have waited six more weeks. You know, there's no reason you wait 33 years and then all of a sudden can't wait six more weeks. Uh, but what the report shows is that basically Joe Biden wanted to get out of Afghanistan in the worst way and, and did James. Yeah, I think it's tricky with these types of investigations, obviously. Uh, as the chairman said, it depends on, uh, cooper operation from some of the witnesses. So you're sort of darned if you do darned if you don't, uh, by, by the timing of it. But I think the reality also is that, you know, the, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was a low mark in us history and there is a need by congressional lawmakers to review what happened there to ensure that it doesn't happen again. But the timing is tricky and people I think are rightly thinking about it as is this a political attack right now? And, and it was a low mark, indeed Bernardine. But does this put us any closer to accountability in Afghanistan? Well, I think on down the road, absolutely. But as we, uh, my other, um, panels have said the timing and also getting the voters and getting people interested in this issue right now. And I think that the, the timing and the ee especially since he still had someone to interview and he released it. So, uh, I don't think that strikes me that we're talking about timing and II, I just don't know if, if this report it's not damning to, to Kamala Harris. So will it really hurt her? Well, but keep in mind the Republicans are trying to tie them together that this is their administration. So anything that that's, that reflects badly on Biden, they want to reflect on her. Jason, the most important thing about this whenever it came out is that nothing like this ever happened again? Indeed. So good deal guys. Thanks so much be and just met with you with you guys. And here's what else is going when we come back here across the board, spending cuts to every single department in Dallas after city council fully funded the police and fire pension council member Chad West. Though on the cost, this will have to taxpayers and state rep. Chris Turner accuses Governor Abbott of playing politics with Texas hospital patients inside Texas politics back in a moment. Welcome back to inside Texas politics. Dallas City council voted to spend $11 billion last week. That's the city's plan to finally and fully fund the police and fire pension system, but spending $11 billion is going to mean cuts elsewhere in the city budget district. One councilman, Chad West taking our questions this morning. Councilman. Welcome back to the program. The the the Dallas police and fire pension has had trouble for years from bad investments to not being fully funded. Does this vote finally fix it? Yeah, the vote gets us on the right track. It then goes on to the state for the state to review that, that plan. And also the plan presented by the pension board. Are they by the Police and Fire Pension Board? Um, and they're gonna make a decision on which one they're gonna, um, support any idea which way the state will go. Yeah, I feel like the state, uh, will see that the city's plan is vetted out. It gets us to 70% funding of the pension plan within 30 years, which is what the state has asked for. So what the state put out there is a requirement we are meeting and we're hoping to exceed that because we obviously want to take care of our men and women who've been heroes to the city of Dallas. We're talking about $11 billion here to fully fund this. Where does that money come from? Yeah. So it's, it's over time. It's not just one payment, it's, uh it's with over a 30 year time span and it's coming from making cuts in the city, hard cuts in the city. We have revenue caps at the state level. Um But it means you can't raise taxes, which means we can't raise taxes, but we do have new revenues coming in every year from, uh you know, new development in the city. And so we, we'll plug some of that funding in. It's sort of like digging in the couch cushions. You've got, um find money wherever you can, you know, just last week I uh located the fact that we're paying $600,000 for a truck terminal under Thanksgiving Square. And why are we doing that? Um With no revenue coming in, those are the kinds of savings we need to find in the budget to supplement the slight bumps in new tax revenue that do come in from new development. We're gonna need all the money we can get so that we don't cut services. The performance of the Dallas Police and fire pension system has, has been way below other cities in the state. I think, uh just maybe looking at what Austin San Antonio Houston are doing, they're all performing better as a pension board in the rate of return than we are. Um, the national average is higher as well. If, if you know, we're below 6% like around 5.7% if you look at it over 10 years is rate of return that this pension board has invested in. Um other cities are well over 6% if they just dumped the money into the S and P 500 which I don't recommend that is, is a sole investment. I mean, you're looking at over 13% over 10 years, so do better if their performance just happens to, to get on par with the S and P or any of the market indexes. Do, does that mean the city would, would be able to invest less or would that just be huge performance returns. That is a great question because if we can see better turns coming out of this like even 1/10 of a percent, you know, give me a full percent. Oh man, it's mean tens of millions of dollars that we can put into libraries, streets. Um you know, actually doing pay increases, uh stipend increases for the folks who are our pension beneficiaries like so, so the city wouldn't have to invest that, that money. If the return increased, it would be a smaller hole that we have to shore up. Um We could put the money into, into other things. Councilman, thank you. Thank you so much. Governor Greg Abbott signed an executive order last month that we have not yet really talked about. Abbott ordered Texas hospitals to track the immigration status of hospital patients. State rep, Chris Turner is a Democrat from Grand Prairie who unleashed online about this and we talked to him right afterwards. Representative, good to see you again here. You, you said this, this uh request from the governor's an immigration stunt. Why? Well, anytime we're talking about health care and Greg Abbott, uh we have to recognize that Greg Abbott has an abysmal failure uh as governor on, on, on health care uh under Greg Abbott, he's been governor for nearly 10 years. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured in the nation, the highest number of uninsured in the nation and shamefully the highest percentage of uninsured Children uh in the nation. So he framed this as a discussion about health care costs. Way to lower health care costs in Texas is to reduce the number of uninsured. He has the power to do that. He's had the power to do that for 10 years, but he has consistently blocked our efforts, Democrats efforts to expand health care coverage which would lower costs for everyone. Uh And, and that's why I think what, what he said is so uh hypocritical what's behind this? Is it, is it pure politics or something else at play? Here? It is pure politics. I, I think, I think there's a couple of things happening. I think what, what you've seen President Biden do uh on the border uh this year uh has, has been successful. He had to do it through executive order because Republicans in Congress, like Ted Cruz blocked uh bipartisan border bill. Uh But it's working and, and, and border crossings are way down. Um And, and Greg Abbott knows that he needs issue to keep his base fired up to keep his fundraising going. Uh So he manufactures a new angle on it uh in order to, to, to fire up his base. I think that's all this is. So, so the governor wants a uh an annual report to go to him and to the speaker of the House. What is the House of Representatives going to do with this information? I, I have no idea what it sounds like to me is a, is a gigantic unfunded mandate on hospitals around the state. They don't have the mechanism to do this. I mean, hospitals, uh when, when you go into a hospital, uh they ask you what's wrong with you and what do we need to do to, to get you healthy again? They don't ask your, your immigration status. They don't ask you where you're from, that's not their job. And, and so you're putting a new uh unfunded mandate on hospital uh that uh that Health and Human Services Commission of Texas is responsible for administering. They don't have the capacity to do that. They're not keeping up with the current responsibilities very well. Uh And so it's just completely unworkable plan. It's a political stunt. What does this cost? Any idea? I have no idea, but it's gonna be expensive. A anytime you put that kind of uh complex unfunded mandate on a state agency and then on, on hundreds of hospitals around the state is gonna be very costly again, driving up costs in the health care system and you and I pay for it at the end. A absolutely. We just like we do today, we, we, we subsidize uh uninsured Texans of which there are 5 million uh through uh our, our health care premiums and through our property taxes. Uh and this is gonna add, add to that uh uh Total representative. Thank you for the time. Thank you, Jason, the round table is ready when we come back here on inside Texas politics and keep up with Texas politics all week with our podcast. It's called y new content, fresh interviews. Episodes. Drop every Sunday morning wherever you get your podcasts. This is inside Texas politics with Jason Whiteley. All right time. Now for reporters round table to put the headlines in perspective. Bud James and Bernie are all back with us and let's talk about the big political news of the week here guys. It was the presidential debate, 67 million people nationwide watching that. A lot of people are wondering in Texas, but does this affect the Ted Cruz call it all red race. Does Kamala Harris's performance and Donald Trump's performance impact that at all. What it really affects is that there were a few undecided voters in this race. They weren't undecided between the two candidates. They were undecided about whether to vote. You know, now there are more Democrats who are motivated, who are turning out who are energized, who are probably going to vote. You look at the Texas voter registration. There are 2.5 million more voters than there were the last time Ted Cruz was on the ticket. He only won by 200,000 votes. If more Democrats are registering, it might affect him and James will this impact? Are Republicans going to have to do more, spend more money to promote their ticket? Now I think certainly Senator Cruz is taking this race seriously. He's spending a lot of money on it. He doesn't want what happened in 2018, uh, against Beto o'rourke. But I think the reality is this Democrats may be energized but, you know, people know who Ted Cruz is. He's got high favorability, high unfavorability. What really matters is what Colin Allred does because it's a presidential year, there's going to be high turnout. But if they don't know who Colin Allred is, then they're not gonna vote for him. So he needs to get out there and make it competitive. Bernardin at the end of the day. Do, does the presidential debate that we watched in Philadelphia last Tuesday? Does that impact turn out here in this state? I think so because uh what, what the Democrats saw was a candidate who they're proud of, who they can get behind, who they can support. It may contains that momentum, which is going to be very paramount in turning out that vote. And I think that that's what's going to impact the tial uh race as well that you're going to have a number of, of Democrats who were so dissatisfied with Biden. Now going to the polls a a as well as um people who don't like uh Ted Cruz perhaps calling all give him alternative. But I wanna say, I wanna address what James says in terms of um they don't know who he is. He's advertising an awful lot. And by the time Election Day comes around, they're going to know who he is. He's everywhere in terms of advertising. But do we know any more about those 2.5 million new voters? Which way they might go? Because there in six years, a lot of people have moved to this state, we don't know, we know that, that the numbers are way up, but we also know that, uh a lot of conservatives have moved to Texas and a lot of people, you know, have moved from other states because they think Texas is pro business and you know, sees things their way and James at the end of the day, let me ask you the same question asked Bernardine, will the debate performance that Kamala Harris had, will that affect turnout here in the state? I think. So, I mean, I think you're seeing a lot of energy from democratic voters, you saw a clear contrast and where it really is going to affect, I think is with independence and which way they're going to go. I think Bud talked about this a little bit those independents that may be a little bit more conservative leaning, but don't necessarily like President Trump and what he wrote, um how he talked the sort of chaotic energy that he brings. Maybe they're looking at Kamala Harrison saying, oh, I think I can live with that. So I think that's where you might see the difference from that debate. Bernardine. Let's talk about the, the latest news in the Texas House of Representatives. Of course, they're on the interim right here but 1/4 Republican uh has announced that he's running for Speaker of the House. It's James Frank State rep, James Frank Republican from Wichita Falls. He's the fourth one. All four of these people challenging dade feeling for the gavel in the, in the, in the State House are all saying that we want a number of things, but we don't, I don't want any more Democratics, uh Democrats to chair committees. What, what does this do to Dave F? Does he, does he end up capitulating here and saying we're, we're getting away with that, that tradition is going away. Well, it, it remains to be seen, but that is one thing that separates him from the rest. And uh if you're looking at the numbers and looking at those who are going against Phelan, then sooner or later, they just might have to depend on uh democratic voters, democratic representatives. And uh Phelan at this point is the only one who has not said that he would report a democrat, appoint a democrat James. Let's talk about the math here briefly for a moment here. I mean, they're really split the pie in a lot of different directions here. I mean, Feland still had this is his race to lose, right? I think so. And I think the one thing worth pointing out is that none of these candidates for speaker have come out with any pledges. Usually when you come out strong and you're gonna win this thing, you come out and say, here's my pledges. Here's how many people I've got on my team get on board or you're gonna be in trouble. We have not seen that yet. So I think speaker feeling is still in a strong position. However, if we keep going this way and there's more and more people uh jumping into the race, that's sort of splitting up and they're all playing same sandbox. So I think there's going to be more clarity after the November election and when we see the numbers look like in the house, but final word, Jason, these are all strong pro voucher candidates that are turning into a referendum of, are you definitely for vouchers or you kind of wishy washy on vouchers or are you going to go with? They feel that's what it's all about as soon as November 5th is over, the legislature is going to ramp up. So it would be a lot of politics involved with that guys. Thanks so much. We appreciate it. Thank you for watching as well. We're back next Sunday to take you inside Texas politics and hope to see you then take care.