Compare And Contrast Constitution And Texas Constitution

Melanie Eubanks

20 April 2018

Govt 2306

Professor Ouardi

Comparing and Contrasting the Us Constitution and the Texas Constitution

How They Compare

If you look at it, the Texas and US constitutions are very similar to each other. Both of them contain the basic elements of our democratic republic or representative democracy. As they say; for the people, by the people. Each document has a bill of rights that gives certain rights to its people. Each document has a legislature made of 2 houses; the senate & the house of representatives. Each document provides a separation between each branch of the government and allows each branch to limit the powers of the others. Just as the US constitution has a supremacy clause that makes it the superior

The President has the concentrated power of the executive along with a host of other powers that make the US executive branch fairly strong. The Texas constitution, when chartered, was designed to do the exact opposite so it created what is called a plural executive. This takes executive power and spreads it across multiple people stopping one person or elected office from having too much power or consolidated power. It essentially ensured the governor, unlike the president, was weak. One major difference with the executive office, one I particularly like about Texas, is how each chief executive vetoes bills. The President when vetoing a bill must veto the entire bill or not veto at all. The Texas constitution allows for a line-item veto allows the governor to veto specific items in a bill without having to veto the entire bill itself. The US Supreme Court said the line item veto is a violation of the Separation of Powers and thusly unconstitutional. the governor to veto specific items contained within appropriations bills passed by the legislature. This is comical because it gives the governor an extra power the US constitution does not, this would seem at odds given how Texas tries to limit the power of one single

In the US constitution it does nothing to regulate the tax and spend policies congress decides to write into bills. This is not how it is in Texas. The Texas constitution has very detailed guidelines for how state legislators can spend state money and the taxing laws they may pass. They mandate specific percentage that are to be spend on areas such as education. An example of this would be how Texas forbids taxing personal income and it also forbids Texas from going into debt forcing the state to balance its books. Could you imagine if the federal government could not tax your personal income AND had to balance the budget every year? One of the biggest differences is how each legislature is paid and required to meet. US congressman are full-time federal employees. They are paid as such and therefore being a congressman is their careers. They are also required to meet annually. The Texas legislature is not this way. It is not full-time rather part-time and the pay is minimal at only $7,200 per year, therefore Texas congressman must have other careers besides being in the legislature. Also the Texas constitution requires the Texas legislature to meet for 140 day sessions every 2