Wendy Davis Goes to Austin: Watch the Entirety of Fort Worth Senator's Late-Night Filibuster

By Robert Wilonsky Mon., May 30 2011 at 9:34 AM

Late last night, the Startlegram's Bud Kennedy took to Facebook to pass along state Sen. Wendy Davis's heads-up that she was about to begin her filibuster intended to shut down (which is to say, temporarily delay) the vote that would have gutted public education. Said the Fort Worth Democrat and attorney: "I am filibustering because it is our duty to do better by Texas families." And so she spoke and spoke and spoke till the midnight deadline rolled around, thus putting off the inevitable till, perhaps, as early as tomorrow, when Gov. Rick Perry's expected to call his oh-so-special session. Rodney Ellis even took this twitpic.

Davis and other Dems are furious not only that the Lege refuses to dip into the Rainy Day Fund to make up some $4 billion in cuts, but that legislators have rewritten funding formulas that fail to take into account student population growth in the future and essentially make the fund hands-off when it comes to public ed. "We have a Rainy Day Fund, and we didn't use a single dollar of it to fund our failure," said Davis.

"In our own households," she continued, "if we had money in the bank and our homes were about to be foreclosed on, we would spend the money in the bank. It would be irresponsible for us not to do that. And so many of our constituents, our families, our school teachers, our school districts have asked us to use the money we have in the bank so we don't take this first step toward failing them. The response was not to do that. It was even worse than that ... It was to say, 'We're going to rewrite the formula that allows us to permanently wipe [funding for public education] off our balance sheet."

The Texas Observer's recap this morning is headlined: "Wendy Davis' Last Hurrah?" Decide for yourself. Watch the whole thing here. Davis's speech begins at the 1:35 mark. And lasts a while.

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Bob Horton

Can't find link to view

MikeDallas11

What does this action accomplish? The legislature comes back into session today or tomorrow passes the same plan with a majority. We just wasted more money paying people for extra days. Bottom line virtually no pressure exists to either raise taxes or use more of the fund except on editorial pages and teachers' unions. Battle is over. Nothing new will occur until regular people start seeing the impacts. Then the battle will start again. If people don't see any impacts, then we know what is the new baseline.

Joyce Foreman

Thank you Wendy Davis for standing up for the citizens of Texas. I wish some of the more tenured elected state offficials had your courage.

CrackerDaddy

Right on Joyce!

trashtalk

The faux budget is being held together with spit and bailing wire. The Rainy Day Funds are being saved because Medicaid funding doesn't pass the smell test.

The Republicans and governor big hair were very busy putting out press releases on how they were able to cut education and other services to make the budget pass, unlike big, bad, Washington.

Of course, in their usual lying manner, they were trying to use the last stimulus funds to show they didn't cut schools as much the first year, with Washington's help of course.

Rick Perry is trying to build a platform to run for President on the backs of parents, children, the poor, and the old. It is imperative to his interests that education be cut one way or another.

We expect the Democrats in the Senate to make a last stand for the children in the state, whatever that requires...... the blonde Democrat took on Shapiro who was aghast that children (and they still are CHILDREN) were receiving ayn educational services while they are locked up at Windham.

So Shapiro decided their services could simply be online. Shapiro is so delusional she doesn't understand that DISD dropouts make up a large portion of those students, and that most of them can't READ and many are special education students who never received services. However, since she is punishing all students in Texas public schools, she wanted those students punished even harder.

Wonder how Shapiro felt as Wendy read out the millions being cut from Fort Worth schools while Shapiro thinks her harder state exams will save education. Can someone in Collin County run and put this woman away?

scottindallas

Flo Sho is loco fo sho.

yeahIsaidthat

She's the hero, Perry's the tool. She's so good, the Republicans are trying to gerrymander out of a job. I call it the Angela Hunt effect. She's too smart, the boys are too intimidated. Perry doesn't want to touch that Rainy Day fund 'cause he's going to try and make a run in 2012 and that would give the Dems another thing to bust his ballz.The 2011-12 budget was also half assed funded and the 2012-2013 is going to be even worse.Perry is going to pull a 'Leppert' and make the jump. Watch.

Casual Observer

Wendy Davis, you are a hero to every child in public schools in Texas!

Artsycrowd

Has someone mis appropriated this money or maybe stolen it. Where is the money. We speak of a rainey day fund, I'm convinced the money is missing.

scottindallas

Now, I had that same thought as well.

Oak Cliff Townie

'We're going to rewrite the formula that allows us to permanently wipe [funding for public education] off our balance sheet."

1.Think of how large the rainy day fund will be then ?

G_David

Why the hell do we even have a Rainy Day Fund? If this isn't a rainy day, then I'd hate to see what qualifies as such.

scottindallas

We of course need the fund since states cannot run deficits like the Federal gov't can. We shouldn't deplete that fund until we have our budget balanced and revenue and expenditures meet. If home values continue to fall (even ever so slightly as ours has) it is a revenue decrease, we may need that fund for a few years.

That said, I am glad someone is making these arguments, it's hard to find responsible politicians any more.