Catching Up...and Sounding Off!

Today at the House we voted on the two bills mentioned below; both passed without pause. We also caucused two bills that will be COW'd tomorrow. I will link to those in a later post.

Russell Pearce had one of his bills die in the Senate...I am unsure what the subject but I think it had something to do with driver's licenses. You can find the information on the Senate website, if interested. The bill went down pretty hard though, with only 5 or 6 yes votes. Russell swears that it is a good bill...I think there might have been a problem with a way the bill was written, from what I am hearing.

Also in the Senate, Conservative Republican GOP activist Sylvia Allen was sworn in as the District 5 replacement for the late Jake Flake. I visited the Senate Floor briefly with in order to meet her and offer my encouragement as she makes the transition.

Tomorrow I have a House and Senate Joint Appropriations meeting that begins at 1:30 pm. You can watch this meeting live via the Internet.

http://azleg.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=&clip_id=&publish_id=13&event_id=

According to my colleague and House Appropriations Chairman Representative Pearce, he has asked various state agency directors to appear before the committee and testify on what impact government shut down would have on their agency. This is an ever apparent reality as we have 15 days to develop a budget proposal with no acceptable, responsible solution in sight. Not one of my colleagues in the House has an update of any progress though there is rumor that leadership, excluding the Approps Chairmen, are meeting with the Democrats.

How is that for a slap in the face, not only to rank and file republican lawmakers but to the people of Arizona?

Republicans are the majority in both the House and the Senate and their elected leadership has abandon them and are now pandering to the Dems!!!! I believe their plan is to put to a vote the "best" democrat budget they can negotiate. If this is indeed their plan we could have preserved a few precious individual liberties and avoided needless new legislation if they had just run the Governor's budget up the board in the first place.

As usual, I will keep attempt to keep you abreast of the news as it develops.

At your service,
RepGroe