Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

"The only tool Democrats have is this five-day delay, essentially a filibuster." Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth

AUSTIN — A controversial voter-identification bill perished along with possibly hundreds of other bills this morning in a partisan dispute in the state House of Representatives.

As a critical midnight deadline passed, Republicans also succeeded in blocking legislation to allow the state to accept $555 million in federal stimulus money rejected by Gov. Rick Perry. Democrats brought up the bill about 15 minutes before midnight, but Republicans ran out the clock with an amendment by Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford.

Imperiled Senate-passed bills included expanded health insurance for children, an overhaul of the Texas Department of Insurance and funding of a windstorm insurance pool for the Gulf Coast.

"Two years of work full time by the 31 senators and myself will go down in flames," said Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, the Senate’s presiding officer, referring to key bills that began taking shape after the 2007 Legislature.

The potential carnage in the final six days of the 2009 Legislature threatened to have a broad reach, dooming bills that could affect the lives of millions of Texans. Lawmakers, lobbyists, advocacy groups and grassroots organizations all had a stake in the imperiled bills.

"It’s terminal in there," said Rep. David Swifford, R-Dumas, as he left the House chamber at mid-afternoon.

The bills have a slim chance for survival before the June 1 adjournment, but it would take a supermajority vote to consider the bills. That’s considered unlikely in an almost evenly divided House, where members of both parties have drawn fine partisan line on voter ID and other issues.

House members have been locked in a standoff since Friday, when Democrats began a parliamentary slowdown aimed at killing the voter ID bill, which they say could disenfranchise poor, minority and elderly voters. Republicans have made passage of the bill one of their top priorities, saying their constituents demand it to strengthen security at the ballot box.

Democrats have applied a delaying tactic known as "chubbing" by talking extensively on minor local bills that normally receive quick passage. The goal was to keep the House from reaching the voter ID bill. But bills behind it on the calendar were also in danger as lawmakers moved toward the midnight deadline for preliminary passage of Senate bills.

'The right to vote’

Rep. Lon Burnam said Republicans made a choice at the beginning of the session when, targeting the voter ID issue, they suspended the rule that requires approval of two-thirds of the Senate for a bill to be put to a vote.

"The only tool Democrats have is this five-day delay, essentially a filibuster," said Burnam, D-Fort Worth. "I won’t kill a person for the right to vote, but I’ll kill hundreds of bills for the right to vote."

Rep. Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, told his colleagues early in the day that he would talk just shy of 10 minutes on each of about 150 bills on the local and consent calendar Tuesday, trying to run out the clock and prevent voter ID from reaching the floor before its midnight deadline.

"I will do everything I can within the rules to oppose something I believe is so fundamentally wrong," Raymond said during a passionate speech on the House floor. "Don’t ask me to betray my beliefs because I would never do that to you."

Special session looms

The collateral damage inflicted on other bills raised the possibility that lawmakers will be called back to the Capitol after the session ends Monday. Gov. Rick Perry has strongly signaled that he will call a special session if lawmakers fail to enact the windstorm insurance bill.

"I think it’s imperative that he does," said Lee Loftis, executive director of government affairs for Independent Insurance Agents of Texas, which has made enactment of the bill its top priority. "Every hour that ticks off the clock is one less opportunity to get it to the floor and get it heard."

Supporters of voter ID legislation, widely acknowledging that the bill appears dead, are also hoping that Perry will include it in a special session if he calls lawmakers back to address windstorm insurance. But Perry’s office has been publicly noncommittal.

"At this point, our comment is there’s still time" left in the current session, his spokeswoman Allison Castle said.

Throughout the Capitol, reaction ranged from anger — particularly among Republicans — to fatalistic acceptance as the clock ticked toward midnight. Lobbyists who routinely gather outside the chamber each day swapped stories about pet bills going down the drain.

"Hundreds of important pieces of legislation are dying because of this," said Rep. Mark Shelton, R-Fort Worth. "This is so needless. All of this could have been done, but Democrats are suppressing the vote in the Texas House."

Shelton was especially upset that a measure he was carrying, SB 66, was among those with little hope late Tuesday. That bill would have ensured that children in the child support system would have health insurance through a newly created insurance pool. "This little stunt is affecting 200,000 children, and I’m furious about it," he said.

Dewhurst, in a brief hallway interview with the Star-Telegram, said he had a personal stake in at least four major bills: SBs 6, 7, 8 and 10, which collectively are designed to improve healthcare and reduce costs.

"I’ve spent 20 percent of my life just on those four bills," he said.

Senators were taking measures they feared would die in the House and attaching them as amendments to the bills they are considering.

"Our hope is if we pass them off the Senate floor, they’ll be accepted in the House," said Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth. "But it doesn’t ensure their continued life."

State Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, said she was disappointed in the House Democrats’ maneuvers because it likely would kill about 32 of her bills on issues from healthcare to human services.

"These aren’t partisan issues, and shouldn’t be caught up in this," she said. "I don’t understand why they won’t vote. Vote it up or vote it down, but vote and let’s move on."