As we edge closer to the start of the 82nd Legislature in Texas, many people are becoming jittery over the biennial budget and its projected $20 billion shortfall. Cutting back is never enjoyable, but then again, neither are tax increases. While budget cuts are sure to upset many people, they are actually better for our state, our budget, and future economic growth.

The Straus team, which includes the Austin media jack-in-the-boxes, is making hay about the pledge count. Straus has 120 and Paxton has 12. It’s a good sound bite for them.

It’s also as hollow as a paper mache speaker gavel.

For a variety of bad reasons, political and otherwise, some say Texas will face an insurmountable budget crisis when lawmakers meet in January. But Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst tells the Austin American Statesman that the budget hole won’t be what many have claimed.

Joe Straus’s sacrificing of his relationship with Larry Taylor at the altar of establishment control exposes his “let’s all be sweet to each other” scam. Taylor is being scapegoated amid an ethics storm gathering around the Straus team.

So much for that congenial loyalty we’ve heard about. Texas House Speaker Joe Straus this weekend tossed House Republican Caucus chairman Larry Taylor under the proverbial bus. So much for friendship.

In an interview with the Houston Chronicle, Straus said he wants the Texas House to address ethics reform.

Joe Straus lieutenant Jim Pitts provided a snapshot for the importance of the Texas House Speaker race when he told a questioner that to save any money opting out of federal Medicaid Texas would have to throw people out on the street .

With all the commotion surrounding the fight for a more conservative Texas House Speaker, it seems as if the special election to fill the late-State Representative Edmund Kuempel’s seat in HD 44 has been greatly overlooked.

When the General Investigating & Ethics Committee met to hear allegations a member of Speaker Joe Straus’ leadership team threatened to use redistricting as retribution against other lawmakers, Chairman Chuck Hopson didn’t ask the accused to testify oath. And that appears to violate state law.

The biggest argument in defense of Speaker Joe Straus is that under Tom Craddick, Republicans lost many seats in the Texas House, but under Straus we gained 22 seats. While this is true, I don’t think the two are related at all. Texans elected 22 new conservatives to the Texas House of Representatives because Texans were clearly yearning for smaller, smarter government!

When it comes to protecting their own, the Texas House General Investigating Committee has no peer. The chairman of the committee says he will have a closed-door meeting Tuesday morning to determine whether a fellow legislator, and leadership ally, made illegal threats. Could this be a whitewash in the making?

We’re in the frontier with this speaker’s race. Nobody knows what we’ll find. Nobody’s been here before.

With the removal of the law that forbade citizen engagement in the race, all of us have front row seats to the new system.