'Desperate': Dan Patrick, Dade Phelan escalate fight over school choice, border security

The rift between the Texas House and Senate chiefs, which has widened through a number of arguments this year, increasingly grew Thursday with both Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and House Speaker Dade Phelan trading barbs and expressing disgust with each other over border security proposals and lawmakers' inability to pass a school choice bill.

Patrick in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, said the Beaumont Republican, who heads the House, has "wasted another special session" after both chambers have struggled to come to terms on a Gov. Greg Abbott priority — using public money to pay for private schooling.

Citing a frustration with the lower chamber's seeming unwillingness to advance a school choice program in Texas — Democrats and rural Republicans in the House have stood all year in opposition to an education savings account program that would make several thousands of dollars in state funding available to each eligible student to use for private school tuition — Patrick then tore down House Bill 4, which originally sought to allow law enforcement officers to expel from the country anyone who crossed the border illegally into the United States. A Senate committee on Wednesday, however, overhauled the bill to instead require officers to hand over to federal authorities anyone suspected of illegally entering the country in Texas.

"The Speaker is desperate to improve his border credentials with conservatives and sent the House version of HB4 over to the Senate," Patrick said. "The bill’s author claimed it’s the toughest border bill ever, but it is simply a Texas-sized catch-and-release bill."

Patrick went on to condemn the bill for not addressing identification requirements, fingerprints and background checks for those suspected of entering the country illegally.

"Even if returned to the border, this policy would allow unidentified hardened criminals and terrorists to slip through the cracks and cross the border over and over again," Patrick said.

After the Senate Committee on Border Security amended HB 4 to limit state law enforcement's ability to enforce what many have called Texas' attempt at immigration law, the full Senate is slated to consider the bill Sunday. Currently, the measures Patrick is seeking to be included in the bill are not in the Senate's version of HB 4.

More: Texas Senate panel revises, advances bill creating penalties for illegal entry into US

In response to the harsh critique, Phelan called Patrick desperate after allowing a committee in the Senate to gut the bill of its sharpest enforcement mechanism.

"The Lt. Governor's statement is a desperate bid to salvage what's left of his credibility on border security this special session after the Senate significantly watered-down House Bill 4, the strongest border legislation that has ever been passed out of the House," Phelan said in a post on X on Thursday.

Phelan called the Senate's revamped version of HB 4 a "a long-term, state-funded hospitality program for illegal immigrants" and made clear the House has no intention to back peddling from its bill's original version.

"Dan Patrick's baseless critique of House Bill 4 is a transparent attempt to deflect from his chamber's own impotent response to the growing crisis at our border," Phelan wrote.

Rep. David Spiller, R-Jacksboro, who authored HB 4, called the bill the strongest border legislation filed in the history of both Texas and the United States.

"This landmark border security legislation has been carefully crafted and designed with the Office of the Governor and, when passed, will be the strongest in our nation," Spiller said in a statement. "I commend Governor Abbott for adding this to the Special Session call and for Speaker Phelan's leadership to ensure House Bill 4 makes it across the finish line."

Caught in the crossfire of the legislative feud is also a proposal — similarly mirrored in both chambers — that would allocate between $1.5 and $1.54 billion to fund the construction of a border wall and other security initiatives.

While both Republican-led chambers have expressed a desire to pass funding for border security proposals, the tiff between the Senate and House leaders, and the running clock on the 30-day special session that expires Tuesday, could mean doom for some bills.

"Texans are watching and waiting tor the Senate to match their words with action," Phelan said of the "inexplicably stalled" House legislation.

At the outset of the current special session that began in early October, Phelan and Patrick got off to a rocky start on day one with Patrick demanding Phelan's resignation after the House chief's request to lawmakers to donate any political contributions they've received from the Defend Texas Liberty PAC, a hardline conservative group, after its former leader met with an avowed white supremacist last month.

Another possible victim of the chiefs' dispute could be school voucher legislation, which Abbott has aggressively pushed for all year.

Abbott on Wednesday said he believed lawmakers had enough time in this special session to reach a deal on education savings accounts, though Democrats and Republicans in the House have said the chance of advancing a bill is slim to none.

Despite the growing chasm between the state's top leaders, the House and Senate were able to agree on increasing penalties for those arrested for human smuggling and operating stash houses as well as on legislation to prohibit private employers from enforcing COVID-19 vaccine requirements.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: Texas Legislature: House, Senate chiefs fight over border, schools