Take Action - The Home Stretch!

Submitted by Sean Hennigan on Mon, 05/20/2013 - 11:26am

The Home Stretch!

There's just one week to go in the 83rd Texas legislative session. Some of Texas Impact's priority bills are dead, and that's too bad--but others are almost through the process and we need your help to get them across the finish line!

Find your representative and senator here.

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Rep. McClendon's HB 166, Innocence Commission, Passes The House

Submitted by Sean Hennigan on Wed, 04/24/2013 - 7:55pm

HB 166, Rep. McClendon's Innocence Commission bill, passed the Texas House today.

The Texas House has passed HB 166 creating a commission to study causes of wrongful conviction and sent the bill onto the Senate.

The vote was 115-28.

HB 166 would create a commission with a panel of 9 experts to study these cases, go back and examine what went wrong, and to provide recommendations to improve our accuracy and prevent this loss of liberty from happening again.

Humans are imperfect.  We create boards and commissions to study mistakes with regard to air travel, emergency rooms and hospitals.  The same should be true for criminal justice.

We congratulate Rep. McClendon who has long championed this legislation.  We thank the bipartisan ensemble of joint and co-authors for their commitment to improving our justice system.

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Statement on Senate Bill 1247, the Payday Lending Reform Bill

Submitted by Bee on Tue, 04/23/2013 - 8:37pm

 

(AUSTIN, Texas)–April 23, 2013–The Center for Public Policy Priorities and Texas Impact made the following statement in response to the Senate's passage of SB 1247, the payday lending reform bill:

"To protect low-income consumers, Texas must regulate payday and auto title lenders and stop the cycle of debt. Monday night, we applauded as the Senate took a strong stand for tough regulation. Tuesday morning, however, we faced the task of moving the Senate bill through the House.

"As we move forward, we must be realistic.

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NUMBERS MATTER: REAL SAVINGS FOR REAL TEXANS THROUGH PAYDAY LENDING REGULATION

Submitted by Bee on Sun, 04/21/2013 - 2:43pm

Texas Impact and the Center for Public Policy Priorities support payday lending regulation. We wrote an op-ed for the Quorum Report explaining why we think SB 1247 is so crucial for Texas:

Numbers matter in public policy. More often than not, public policy goals are expressed as magnitudes: we hope for less of a bad thing, or more of a good thing.

Numbers are especially important when the policy is about money. Is your policy goal to save people money? The policy results that matter are: how much money got saved and how many people saved it.

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Lege TV: A Dozen Videos About Medicaid Extension In Texas

Submitted by Sean Hennigan on Tue, 04/16/2013 - 11:54pm

Texas Impact staff, friends and coalition partners testified on April 16 about a pair of bills that would expand access to health insurance for low-income Texans.

HB 3376 by Rep. Sylvester Turner and Rep. Lucio III relates "to expanding eligibility for medical assistance to certain persons under the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and ensuring the provision of quality care under and the effectiveness of the medical assistance program."

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Sharia, Senate Bill 1639, and Building an Inclusive Community

Submitted by Bee on Tue, 04/16/2013 - 10:32am

In recent years, there has been a well-funded effort to push state legislatures around the country to prohibit the application of "sharia law" in American courts. In 2010, Oklahoma passed a referendum that expressly prohibited "sharia law," but it was later struck down by U.S. courts because it discriminated against a particular religion, thus violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. In response to this court defeat, proponents of anti-sharia measures have substituted "foreign law" in place of "sharia law" in recent legislative attempts.

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