Monday, April 25th marked the first day of the highly anticipated House floor budget debates. Today I arrived at the State House just as the offices opened around 9:00am to help prepare for the debates. After a quick lunch with Jessica Yazhari (Rep. Hill’s aide) in the Republican Leader’s Office I went up to the House chamber to watch the debates from the Republican table on the floor. At the GOP table there are 2-3 staffers who work at the table. Their main responsibilities are to communicate with the workers back in the Republican Leader’s office as to what is transpiring on the floor. They also must be knowledgeable about any bill that is being debated on the floor and must be able to give any representative information and facts about proposed bills. The first order of business regarding the budget was to deal with revenue amendments. One such proposal by GOP leader Brad Jones of North Reading was to lower the state income tax from 5.3% to 5%. Although every Republican in the House supported this bill it was easily defeated because of the overwhelming majority that the Democrats hold in the House. One thing that surprised me was when a representative would be giving a speech and the rest of the members would be walking around the chamber talking to other colleagues or talking on their cell phones completely ignoring the person speaking at the podium. Overall, it was an interesting day and I was fortunate to be able to sit on the House floor during the debates.
