AUSTIN, Texas — The passage of a House resolution honoring Houston native and singer Beyoncé Knowles-Carter on her Grammy wins trigged outrage from some Republican lawmakers upset over the chamber's lack of progress this session.

What You Need To Know

  • The Texas Legislature has been in session for weeks and the House still doesn't have committee assignments 

  • The Texas Senate, meanwhile, has already hit the ground running, passing Senate Bill 2, which would create private school vouchers

  • The House's perceived lack of progress has angered some Texas Republicans 

  • The speaker's office expects committee assignments to be announced sometime this week

“I think it's tone deaf for us to honor celebrities rather than saying, 'Hey, let's do something for everyday Texans whose tax dollars are paying for us to be here,'” said Fort Worth Rep. Nate Schatzline.

The Senate hit the ground running. They’ve held multiple committee hearings and even passed Senate Bill 2, which would create an education savings account system and allow tax dollars to go to private schools.

Waxahachie Rep. Brian Harrison, a far-right member of the chamber, says the body is wasting time as bills can’t be debated or passed without committee assignments. 

“It's an outrageous decision by the so-called Republican leadership of the House to participate in what I'm calling 'Operation Run out the Clock,'” said Harrison.

The House is under the new leadership of Speaker Dustin Burrows, and as part of new chamber rules, they removed, created and consolidated multiple committees.

“I think clearly there's some reorganization going on,” said Matthew Wilson, a professor of political sciences at Southern Methodist University.

Schatzline, another far-right member of the chamber, doesn’t buy that line of thinking.

“We've been told by Dustin Burrows and his team that they've known they were going to be the speaker for months, and on top of that he was chair of Calendars (Committee) last session,” he said.

Still, the release of the chamber's committee assignments is not yet out of step compared to previous sessions.

Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Gene Wu is not concerned.

“I think that there's a lot of people out there who are expecting there to be consternation and backstabbing and all this other stuff, and I think what they're getting instead, at least so far, are the sensible people, people in the rational middle who are deciding that actually fixing problems is more important than playing political games,” Wu said.

The Texas legislative session starts on the second Tuesday of January every odd number year. During the last legislative session House members knew their committee assignments four weeks after the start of the session. This week marks the fourth week of the current legislative session.

“I don't think that it's that big of a deal right now that we don't have the committee structures in place, because in the first part of the legislative session, the Legislature can't work on anything except for the governor's stated emergency priorities anyway,” said Wilson.

When committees are formed there will be a big change. This session Republicans will chair every committee, while vice chair positions are reserved for Democrats.

“I think what's going to be great is having vice chairs in those positions, in those committees that can call bills, that could set witnesses, that can do lots of different things that we couldn't do before. I think this will give a chance for half a state to have their issues heard and have their voices, have their concerns voiced,” said Wu.

The speaker's office expects committee assignments to be announced sometime this week.