| Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a veteran San Antonio Democrat who was elected as caucus chair for this session, is known around the Capitol as a brawling but shrewd tactician. He has used his knowledge of the Legislature's rules and procedures to derail numerous GOP bills over the years — a reputation that played a key role in his selection as caucus chair, Democrats said. "The metric of success for this caucus, No. 1, is they have to respect us," Martinez Fischer said. "And my second metric for success is to deal with the reality that we live in. We live in a Republican majority, but we happen to be in a circumstance where we have 33 billion reasons to be hopeful and optimistic that we're going to have a bipartisan session." The number he's citing is the budget surplus facing the state, announced earlier this week. Speaker Dade Phelan said Tuesday he hoped to spend it on health care costs and access, infrastructure and a number of other policies that could potentially win bipartisan support. "My hope and my preference is that we're going to work on fixing things," said Martinez Fischer, who served in the House from 2001 to 2017 and won back his seat in 2018. "Every session that I've come here, there's been no shortage of good ideas. There's always just been a shortage of resources. Hopefully we can have a perfect union of good ideas and resources to improve lives." Read the full story here. | 
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