Texas. Legislature. Senate. Committee of the Whole Senate to Investigate Relief Bonds.

Texas Governor Miriam Ferguson called the Third Called Session of the 43rd Legislature in August of 1934 for the primary purpose of passing any necessary laws to provide for the issuance and sale of the remaining bonds permitted by the 1933 Constitutional Amendment for the purpose of affording relief to the Depression-era unemployed and indigent of Texas. Accordingly, on August 30, 1934, Senator Woodruff introduced Senate Resolution 6, proposing that the Senate resolve itself into a Committee of the Whole to inquire into the adequacy of the present statutes to regulate properly the administration of the relief funds of Texas and into any and all matters... which might be constructively useful in the discharge of [the Committee's] duties. The resolution was adopted and Senator Murphy was appointed chair of the Committee of the Whole Senate. The committee first met on August 31, 1934 for preliminary business and then met daily from September 3 through 7.

On September 7, 1934, the committee adjourned subject to call (but was never recalled) and the Senate immediately took up Senate Bill 5, providing for the issuance of Texas Relief Bonds, Third Series. The bill was amended to substitute for House Bill 1 (a bill with the same intent), but the House did not concur in the amendments and sent the bill to conference committee, where it stayed until September 24, 1934. The conference committee finally proposed a highly detailed version of the bill that issued $6,000,000 in Third Series Relief Bonds and made the Texas Relief Commission part of the Texas State Board of Control; it passed on September 24 after first being defeated and then reconsidered.