TX House Olcott: Standing Together For Life, 89th Legislative Congress.
- Manager
- Apr 23
- 3 min read
Updated: May 3
Summary: "This past Thursday, April 17, one of the resolutions on the Memorial Calendar was a resolution submitted by Democrat Representative Donna Howard. Her resolution was one that honored the life of Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood - an organization responsible for the murder of millions of babies. My conservative colleagues and I strongly objected that such a resolution had been placed on the Memorial Calendar for a vote..."
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Standing Together For Life
My Fellow Texans,
After almost two months of voting on non-binding resolutions, the Texas House of Representatives finally began voting on actual bills on April 1. Conservative, reform-minded Representatives have been very frustrated that we did not begin sooner. Although we are now voting on important bills, we still have weekly congratulatory calendars and memorial calendars that are brought in front of the Texas House for a vote.
A Congratulatory Calendar is a group of resolutions put forth by various members of the Texas House that usually congratulate a school, a person or recognize an organization. A Memorial Calendar is a group of resolutions honoring different people who recently passed away. Resolutions are submitted to the Local and Consent Calendars Committee where they are approved or rejected by the committee. If approved, they are put on the calendar to be voted on by the full body of the Texas House.
This past Thursday, April 17, one of the resolutions on the Memorial Calendar was a resolution submitted by Democrat Representative Donna Howard. Her resolution was one that honored the life of Cecile Richards, the former president of Planned Parenthood - an organization responsible for the murder of millions of babies. My conservative colleagues and I strongly objected that such a resolution had been placed on the Memorial Calendar for a vote - especially considering that the Local and Consent Calendars Committee is chaired by a Republican, Representative Jared Patterson.
The challenge that we faced was that the resolution was grouped with a bunch of other resolutions as part of the Memorial Calendar and we are not allowed to vote on them separately. Through a series of questions from the back mic, we tried to see if there was any parliamentary procedure that we could use to remove the resolution from the whole Memorial Calendar package that was to be voted on. We were told we could not.
We decided that the only option was to make the whole Texas House vote to kill the entire Memorial Calendar which included about 30 resolutions - some of them good ones like the one honoring the life of my good friend Jill Glover who was a strong Christian conservative activist who passed away last year from breast cancer. Jill played a huge role in the passage of the bill last session that banned child gender mutilation surgeries in Texas.
After a brief discussion, we all agreed that Jill would have absolutely agreed that we should kill the entire set of resolutions if that was the only way to prevent the Texas House from passing a resolution honoring a woman responsible for the murder of millions of babies. So, we let the House leadership know that we intended to kill the whole Memorial Calendar.
The sad reality is that most Republicans in the Texas House were OK with the resolution honoring the former Planned Parenthood President, but got very nervous about being forced to vote on killing the whole package after we shined the light on it in such a dramatic way. They also did not want to alienate the Democrats. It is disturbing that House leadership, especially Republican Jared Patterson, would allow such an amendment to be included in the first place.
The bright spots were that we forced House leadership to withdraw the resolution and it brought the team of reform-minded conservatives even closer together. It also demonstrated to House leadership that we will not tolerate the “same ole same ole”!
It was a WIN for LIFE, for Texas, and my late friend Jill Glover!
Click on the following links to view video from this floor fight. If you only have time to watch one video, please watch Representative Nate Schatzline speaking up for the millions of babies murdered by Planned Parenthood in the video below.
Hoping you had a blessed Easter!
For Texas and our Nation,
Mike Olcott
For Texas and our Nation,
Mike Olcott
(817) 727-1869
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