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“My Name Is Tommy Williams, And I Made A Bad Policy Decision”

By Vince Leibowitz  on May 5, 2007 in 80th Legislature      


If there was a Pol-Anon for politicians who had made bad public policy decisions, right now it would be more packed than an the weekly AA meeting nearest the Capitol.

And, it seems State Sen. Tommy Williams (R-The Woodlands), would be its newest member:

State Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, wasn’t in a mood to dance around his point at a legislative hearing this morning on tuition and other higher education matters.

“This is like crack for the universities,” he said. “They just can’t seem to get enough of these tuition increases.”

Williams acknowledged that, as a House member, he voted in 2003 to give public university governing boards the authority to set tuition, a power previously reserved for the Legislature. He has believed for some time that this was a mistake, and he would like the Legislature to withdraw that authority.

Tuition increases have been “unconscionable,” Williams said. “I feel like we got burned. I feel it’s one of the worst public policy decisions we’ve made since I’ve been in the Legislature.”

Can you say, “Hi, my name is Senator Tommy Williams, and I made a bad public policy decision?”

While admitting you have a problem with making bad public policy decisions is a major step on the road to becoming a good public policy decision maker, staying on the good public policy wagon for Republicans has got to be tough. Recovery from making bad public policy decisions has about the same recidivism rate as Crystal Meth: chances are, you’re going to make another one just as a meth user is going to pick up the pipe again.

I also find it interesting that Williams is the one getting all the pseudo-positive press for his conversion. Democrats have been for re-regulation for some time, and were against de-regulation when it reared its ugly head years ago.

I guess, for the media, the flip-flopper is always more newsworthy than those who have held the same opinion for several legislative sessions.

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2 Responses to ““My Name Is Tommy Williams, And I Made A Bad Policy Decision””

  1. moiv on May 6th, 2007 3:02 am

    What genius casting against type: Tommy Williams as the prodigal son.

    As long as he’s coming clean and confessing his bad policy decisions, maybe he’d like to atone for this one.

    The anti-contraception campaign began in earnest in 2003, when state Sen. Tommy Williams devised a plan to close down Planned Parenthood clinics across Texas. State money would no longer fund any entity connected in any way, however tenuously, to the provision of abortion care. Planned Parenthood immediately mounted a legal challenge, and the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals eventually sent Williams home with a scolding, but the law itself remains on the books. And this year Williams’ anti-choice jihad is finally bearing fruit, shutting down the family planning program of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

    [:::]

    If … the Legislature as a whole didn’t understand what it was doing, Tommy Williams certainly did. Because in the 2005 legislative session, he came back and did it again. And this time he not only crippled the purveyors of the “contraceptive mentality” even further, but accomplished his faith-based initiative by diverting millions in state funds intended for family planning and primary health screening into financing the highly dubious practices of crisis pregnancy centers.

    [:::]

    All across the state, tens of thousands of women are being deprived of their only access to family planning services that also include primary screening for cancer, high blood pressure, anemia, STDs and other threats to their health.

    The state’s Health and Human Services Commission tells us that this is a good thing, because “the active promotion of childbirth” is now the official policy of the State of Texas. That the women affected by this dictate might not want to bear children in the service of the state’s policy is not an official concern.

    As the Houston Chronicle said:

    Legislators have every right to push abortion alternatives — as long as they don’t abdicate their other duties. But ravaging working clinics during a health coverage crisis has nothing to do with protecting women or children. It’s self-interested strutting, and it’s trampling on the health of thousands of Texas wives, mothers and daughters.

    Paging Trampling Tommy to the confession booth . . .

  2. Vince Leibowitz on May 6th, 2007 10:38 am

    I had *so* forgotten about this. He has a lot to atone for. Love the “Trampling Tommy” moniker. He could be an entire chapter of Pol-Anon all on his own, except you can bet he’ll never atone for this one.

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