Quotes of the Week

It should be no surprise that if folks want to go home at the end of this legislative session, send me $1.8 billion worth of tax relief, send me a balanced budget that has no fee increases for transportation and $2 billion of infrastructure for water, and everybody can go home and enjoy their summer.

Gov. Rick Perry, on the odds of a special session

We weren't sent here to govern like California.

House Speaker Joe Straus on a Senate proposal to ask voters for permission to tap the Rainy Day Fund

The preferred Senate approach is to take a limited amount of money out of the Rainy Day Fund, as Governor Perry has proposed, and not bust the Constitutional spending cap limit.  In fact, as a fiscal conservative, I will not ask my Senators to vote to bust the Constitutional spending cap limit.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, quoted by the Houston Chronicle, dissing the House plan

Speaking the truth, shining light on substantive disagreements of our elected representatives is not bullying. It is the responsibility of each of us.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, in response to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who on Monday called Cruz a "schoolyard bully"

Now I don’t agree with him. I think he’s out there. But I’m telling you, he’s more talented than all of these other guys.

Democratic consultant James Carville, evaluating Sen. Ted Cruz on ABC's This Week

Today it’s raining for rich people in Texas.

Rep. Roland Gutierrez, D-San Antonio, during House debate over business tax cuts, as quoted by The Dallas Morning News

If I watered it down any more, I couldn’t drink it.

Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, after one of his proposals turned into a study, in the Austin American-Statesman