Houston for the biggest Republican political gathering of the year. Ranger Hank rode up front with the pilots.
'Made Sam Houston a legend. Looks like it's doing the same for you.'
The lieutenant governor downed his bourbon. His second, and they weren't even over La Grange. Mack Murdoch was seventy years old and had served in the state senate for forty years and as lieutenant governor for the last twenty-four. When he got drunk, he recited Barry Goldwater like other people recited Walt Whitman.
But even Jim Beam couldn't improve the speaker's mood.
'We're twenty-seven billion in the hole,' the speaker said, 'but all my House members want to talk about are Mexicans and abortions.'
Bode groaned. 'What now?'
'Voter ID and sonograms.'
'Sonograms?'
'They want to make a woman getting an abortion see a sonogram of the baby.'
'Before or after the abortion?'
'Before. And make the woman listen to the fetal heartbeat.'
'Shit, that's creepy.'
'They want to force girls to have babies they don't want and can't afford,' the speaker said, 'but they don't want to pay more taxes to support and educate those kids once they're born.'
Speaker of the House Richard Warren was forty-three, young to hold the most powerful elected office in Texas-hence, he had not outgrown his nickname 'Dicky'-and considered far too liberal to be a Republican in Texas because (a) he didn't believe abortion was murder, (b) he didn't believe in the death penalty, (c) he didn't believe the Second Amendment applied to assault weapons with thirty-round clips, (d) he didn't hunt, and (e) he didn't cuss. And worst of all, (f) he had chosen college at Yale over UT or A amp;M, always a subversive act in Texas.
'An abortion is a helluva lot cheaper than funding twelve years of school and ten-to-life in prison,' the lieutenant governor said.
Bode shook his head. 'Sonograms. Do these abortion folks just sit around all day dreaming this shit up? Don't they have jobs?'
'Governor,' the speaker said, 'I need you to declare the voter ID and sonogram bills emergency legislation so we can ram them through in the first week after opening gavel, then I can get my members to focus on the budget. House Bill One is going to be ugly.'
The Texas legislature met every other year for one hundred forty days. The first bills introduced each session in the House and the Senate were the general appropriations bills, traditionally designated House Bill 1 and Senate Bill 1. The speaker presided over the House of Representatives, the lieutenant governor over the Senate.
'State constitution requires a balanced budget,' the lieutenant governor said. 'No exception for when Wall Street assholes screw up the world's economy.'
'Only two ways to balance the budget, Governor,' the speaker said. 'Raise taxes or cut spending.'
'Dicky… it's an election year.'
'So we cut spending.' He opened a notebook. 'I figured that, so I've taken a shot at the cuts. First, we fire ten thousand state employees.'
'Hell,' Jim Bob said, 'we got two hundred forty thousand. Fire a hundred thousand.'
'And we gut the public health programs. Twelve million to prevent teen pregnancies-'
'Like that worked,' the lieutenant governor said. 'Our teen pregnancy rate is the highest in the nation. Cheaper to give away condoms at school.'
'Abstinence-only, Mack,' Bode said. 'That's official state policy.'
'That's official state bullshit. TV ran a story the other night about high school girls in East Austin, showed them kissing their babies goodbye before they went to their senior class prom. They ain't abstaining, Governor.'
— 'ten million for the colonias — '
'Shit.'
'— two billion from higher ed-'
'Christ, the UT president's gonna be over to the Mansion crying in his beer-he's sitting on a fifteen-billion- dollar endowment and he bitches every time we cut a dollar from his appropriations.'
'If he's got a hundred million to spend on the football team,' the lieutenant governor said, 'he can pay his own fucking way. Hell, if we spent that much money on our team, we'd beat UT like a redheaded stepchild.'
Mack Murdoch wore his Texas A amp;M class ring as if it were a Purple Heart.
'Dicky, is the House on board with the 'guns on campus' bill? My boys at A amp;M are chomping at the bit.'
'Mack,' the speaker said, 'I'm a little concerned that a kid who gets a B on a term paper might pull his piece and drop his professor.'
The lieutenant governor shrugged. 'One less Democrat in Texas.'
Bode gestured at the speaker's notebook. 'What else is on your list?'
The speaker had taken notice of Bode's grim mood.
'It's fun to talk about cutting spending out on the campaign trail, Governor, not so much actually doing it. And we haven't even gotten to the big budget items, K through twelve and Medicaid.'
Bode exhaled. 'Tell me about Medicaid.'
'Bottomless hole and getting deeper by the day. Fifteen billion a year, a third of the budget. Six out of ten births in Texas are Medicaid babies, we're adding two hundred fifty thousand more people to the rolls each year. Just to keep up, we need three billion more. Every year. Forever.'
'Why do poor people keep having kids they can't afford?' the lieutenant governor said. Then he answered his own question. 'Because they don't have to afford them. We do. Problem is, won't be long before there ain't enough working people to pay for all the poor people.'
Bode stared out the window at Texas twenty thousand feet below. Mack Murdoch was a cantankerous old fart who drank too much bourbon, but that didn't mean he was wrong. The great State of Texas was poor and getting poorer by the day. By the birth. Texas' population had exploded by 4.3 million during the last decade- twenty-five percent of the total U.S. population growth-and ninety percent of those new Texans were poor. They were making a poor state desperately poor. The future of Texas was not bright and shining. It was Mississippi.
'I'm telling you, boys,' the lieutenant governor said, 'this is the end of civilization as we know it. And with our demographics, Texas will be the first to go.' He sighed. 'This used to be a great goddamn state.' He held up his glass as if to toast. 'To Texas.'
Bode and the speaker didn't join him in the toast. The lieutenant governor shrugged then downed his bourbon. Bode turned to the speaker.
'Tell me about K through twelve.'
'Ten billion.'
' Ten billion? Shit, Dicky, that's what, thirty percent of the education budget?'
'Thirty-seven. And another two billion for pre-K.'
'We're gonna cut twelve billion from public schools?'
The speaker turned his palms up. 'That's where the money's at.'
'What's that mean?'
'We cut art and music classes, PE, libraries, band… we'll try to save football and coaches. We won't be able to save the teachers. We'll have to fire thousands. Tens of thousands.'
'Tens of thousands?'
'Fifty, sixty, some projections say a hundred. Thousand.'
'A hundred thousand teachers?'
The speaker gave a grim nod. 'A third of the work force. And they won't take it lying down. They'll march on the Capitol. You piss off a middle-aged woman, you're in big trouble.'
'I know. I'm married to one.'
'We'll have to amend the law to permit larger class sizes, maybe twenty-five kids per class, maybe thirty- five. Maybe fifty-five.'
'Fifty-five kids per class?'
