Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

AUSTIN — A moment after the gavel came down for a recent lunch recess, the main doors of the Texas House opened and lobbyists poured into the chamber like salmon swimming upstream.

Members who wanted to avoid them ducked out the chamber's back doors. Others were quickly collared by lobbyists urging the passage or defeat of legislation.

And on the chamber's south side, three committees met in hastily called sessions at their chairmen's desks to vote out bills ahead of legislation-killing deadlines that are coming up this week.

Transportation Chairman Mike Krusee lacked a quorum at the rear of the chamber. So Krusee took several steps down the aisle toward the crowd gathered at the desk of Criminal Jurisprudence Chairman Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg.

"Joe! Joe Deshotel! Raise your hand!" Krusee shouted to Peña's desk mate.

Rep. Deshotel sat at his own desk, surrounded by Peña's criminal jurisprudence meeting where a bill on sex predators in nursing homes was being debated. Deshotel, D-Beaumont, was preparing for an expected House debate on dog fighting by watching a brutal video of pit bulls ripping each other up.

Deshotel raised his hand to give Krusee his quorum.

Back at the other end of the chamber, the transportation committee could now take a vote on a bill regulating billboards, a measure that has little chance of ever reaching the desk of Gov. Rick Perry.

In the final month of the Legislature, multi-tasking kicks into high gear for lawmakers facing deadlines for getting their bills moving and additional hurdles to their passage.

"Some members are eager to save face by showing they can at least move bills out of committee, even if they don't have a chance," said Krusee, R-Round Rock. "Other members are not so much eager as desperate."

Several major deadlines this week will put Perry in the spotlight and force the House to work late.

The first is a Tuesday deadline for Perry to decide whether he will veto a bill that cancels his executive order that Texas girls be vaccinated against human papillomavirus, a sexually transmitted disease that causes most cervical cancers.

Perry could sign the bill, allow it to become law without his signature or veto it. If he vetoes it, the House and Senate are poised to attempt an override.

Another slap at Perry's policies — a two-year moratorium on building toll roads — will hit a similar deadline next week.

One of Perry's top priorities for the session, selling the Texas Lottery to pay for a cancer research fund, apparently is dead. Perry spokesman Robert Black said the governor still hopes lawmakers will approve a cancer fund paid for with bonds.

"This session has been dominated by the louder issues like HPV or toll roads and even selling the lottery, but we feel good about where issues that are important to the governor stand right now," Black said.

The other drop-dead hurdle for House legislation is a requirement that a preliminary vote be taken on House bills by midnight Thursday. For some lawmakers, that means trying to breathe new life into their legislation by attaching it to other bills in amendments.

For instance, Rep. Leo Berman, R-Tyler, has a bill to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants living in Texas. The bill did not get a hearing in a House committee, but Berman is trying to find legislation he can amend with his legislation.

"I don't give up," Berman said. "I'm just disappointed that we haven't addressed the one subject that is probably more important to any other issue in Texas today, and that's illegal aliens in Texas."

Today is the deadline for House committees to vote out House bills, but Rep. Robert Talton, R-Pasadena, said any House bill just now moving out of committee is likely dead already.

"You've still got to get it through the maze," Talton said. "It's in serious trouble. I think it would be on life support."