Today is bill filing deadline at the Texas Legislature. As I write this, more than 1,500 bills have been filed in the Senate and more than 3,000 in the House. We'll see a rush of bills filed by the end of the day, likely with a crush of staffers dropping a few hundred off around 4:45 this afternoon.
Grits' estimated over-under on total bills filed is 5,000. Take a moment to consider the implications of debating and voting on 5,000 bills in a 140-day session that's nearly half over already!
That's downright insane. It's unimaginable to think these guys understand, much less read, all the garbage they're voting on. Thank God they only meet once every two years.
UPDATE: Grand total was 5,253 separate bills filed in both houses, excluding resolutions and other such claptrap - completely out of hand, IMO. Personally I think we should add a constitutional requirement, at this point, that every bill adding new language to the law must simultaneously delete an equal number of words elsewhere in the statutes. A lot of people say they want to reduce government intrusiveness into people's lives, but the crush of new laws every two years belies all the big talk about "small government."
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