HOW DID MICHAEL BURGESS DO IT?
http://www.quorumreport.com/Subscribers/Article.cfm?IID=16722
Quorum Report
02/19/2011

The congressman, better known for his advocacy on health care policy, took on the Doggett Amendment and won; in an interview with QR, he says, "whether Doggett likes it or not, now it’s time to take care of the school districts and teachers around the state."

Congressman Michael Burgess had doubts, lots of doubts, about whether he was going to be able to pull off stripping the Doggett amendment from the edujobs bill.

Yes, the five-term Lewisville Republican now was in a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. And, yes, he had the support of his Texas colleagues and even the sympathy of the chair of the House Education & Workforce Committee. And he certainly had the rather high-profile backing of Governor Rick Perry.

Burgess, however, is an obstetrician who is far more comfortable expounding on the need to repeal Obamacare than on the intricacies of school finance. He’s never sat on the House education committee. Yet in the midst of this debate, the North Texas lawmaker and father of two schoolteachers sounded for all the world like a headmaster charged with breaking up a schoolyard brawl when he talked about stepping between Perry and Congressman Lloyd Doggett in their war of words.

“The only reason Texas is still waiting for its money is because Congressman Doggett had to poke a stick in Perry’s eye during political season, and this is pure speculation on my part, but I think it escalated way beyond what Doggett thought it would,” Burgess said. “The election is over now. Perry’s going to be our governor for another four years, and whether Doggett likes it or not, now it’s time to take care of the school districts and teachers around the state.”

The back-and-forth between Texas Democrats and Republicans on the Burgess amendment, which occurred in Hour 18 of almost 20 hours of debate over Friday into Saturday in the House, was fractious and not necessarily well received by others in the chamber, who clamored to move on with other amendments. This was, of course, around 3 a.m. on Saturday morning. Burgess pressed on, however, lining up his speakers and trying to make his point that this was the release of money already owed to Texas rather than new spending.

“Here’s just a glaring example of Texas being treated differently from every other state because of this language in a bill,” said Burgess, who didn’t hesitate to lay the blame on all parties involved. “It’s almost unseemly to see two powerful people – one in Texas and one in D.C. – fighting each other over this funding, while the kids and teachers are looking on at this spectacle and wondering, ‘Why us?’”

Burgess said he tried to keep an open mind about the points laid out by his Democratic colleagues, but it still seemed to ring as political rhetoric for him.

“I tried to follow their arguments, but it all seemed to come down to the governor was going to pilfer their funding on some wild weekend somewhere selling his book,” Burgess said. “It just didn’t make sense to me.”

Burgess thought, from his recent fact gathering, he had two key points in his favor: First, he could present anti-spending colleagues with a Congressional Budget Office report that noted his amendment would add nothing to new spending, despite its talk of $830 million. And, adding to his urgency, Burgess had new information from the Department of Education that if the money was not released to Texas by September, it could be swept with the new budget year.

If Texas was thrown into one, two or even three special sessions, Perry might have no chance to file his edujobs application, and the money might actually be lost. That was enough to keep Burgess diligently at the wheel, working his amendment.

Still, facing a House with 87 new colleagues, most of whom were intent on cutting $60 billion or more from the federal budget, made Burgess feel somewhat like a marked man. Talking about the vote on his amendment this afternoon, Burgess said the results of his Hail Mary pass seemed rather unclear to him, and it wasn’t even clear, until the day before the vote, he would make a move at all.

“I thought there was a risk, a real risk, we weren’t going to get this passed. It’s certainly possible that you could argue that a Republican, standing there with a spending bill, was going to be faced with overwhelming opposition,” Burgess said of his decision to push forward for a vote. “The night before, I spent a lot of time walking the floor, trying to get input on good strategy.”

That’s why it was colleague freshman Congressman Francisco Canseco, and not Burgess, who was on deck first to talk about the amendment. Burgess had little to no relationship with his new budget-cutting colleagues in the House. Canseco did.

“He was a tremendous help,” Burgess said. “We have 87 new freshman, and I don’t have a whole of equity with them. As their classmate, he did.”

Burgess said he reached out to the Department of Education himself for guidance on what Texas could do to resolve its situation. A recent complaint lodged with the Department of Justice by the NAACP and MALDEF, however, hampered the agency’s ability to respond to Burgess’ concerns, he said.

The most compelling arguments presented to Burgess appeared to have come from his own son, who teaches gifted-and-talented students. Burgess’ son has taught long enough to keep his own job, Burgess said, but he frequently stressed to his father how important it was to attempt to find that additional funding that would help make school meaningful for his students.

The next step for the Burgess amendment is the Senate version of the continuing resolution. Burgess said he has no illusions that the Senate version could be far different than what came out of a week of debate in the House.

“For all we know, everything we’ve done could vanish like the mist at dawn,” Burgess said. “The Senate is going to have a very different idea of what they want to do. We don’t control them. There are tons of obstacles ahead.”