Pasadena's Keven Baily and Others "We Are United Against Tom Delay"

With just three weeks left in the session, House Speaker Tom Craddick says that before he will allow us to finish any of that work, we must pass a plan hatched in Washington by U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay that would redraw all U.S. congressional districts in Texas. That plan would wipe out districts created just two years ago and already approved by the U.S. Supreme Court -- districts under which all of our Houston-area representatives in Washington were elected just last November.

We have not, in modern history, redrawn congressional districts just because someone in Washington wanted to. Nor should we.

Under DeLay's new rules, Katy would share a congressman with parts of Austin. Kingwood would be attached to East Texas. Inner-city Houston would compete for attention in the same district as residents of Beaumont. U.S. Rep. Chris Bell's district would simply disappear. None of this serves the people we were sent to represent.