From what we have witnessed during this recent legislative horror show, Rick Perry and his Tea Publicans are not going to put people first. They are instead throwing the people under the bus. And ironically, the Party that professes to hate government intrusion into one's life passed an Orwellian bill that does just that to women.
According to reports in the Houston Chronicle, Rick Perry and his tea party lawmakers in the Legislature intend to short public schools and Medicaid by $5 billion.
Perry said the GOP majority’s budget cuts $15.2 billion from current state and federal spending levels – and shorts school districts $4 billion what they’d be due in the next two years under current funding formulas – is “a reflection of these members of the Legislature expressing what happened on the second of November 2010.”
He said they’re representing constituents who sent the message of wanting a “balanced budget, don’t raise my taxes, stay out of the rainy day fund.”
Who said we should not raise taxes or tap into the rainy day fund to meet the state's obligation to pay its bills? Our irresponsible and cowardly Governor, along with his right wing extremist tea party Republican lawmakers, will pull a W. by sticking it to children and the poor while putting the tab on the state's Master Card.
W. did the same to the rest of the U.S when he had no plan to pay for his recklessly unnecessary war in Iraq, the not so ginned up war in a corruption infested Afghanistan, tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and a Medicare entitlement program. W. stuck all of the above, along with a bail out to Wall St. on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.
Texas already has a very low tax base. We pay no income tax. Many of our property taxes have been reduced. We have already trimmed the fat and the budget has been cut down to the bone for a very long time. So, rather than raise taxes or dip into the rainy day fund Rick Perry is willing to rob children and the poor of a future, if not life itself.
It is a tragic day in the once great state of Texas when a Governor and the majority of the state legislature is willing to sell the people into third world squalor.
With the Texas Legislature finally wrapping up its work, Perry publicly acknowledged on Friday that he's been thinking about jumping into the race. And no doubt Perry will claim credit for another balanced budget. Not by way of endorsement, but in the manner of someone assessing a Kentucky Derby contender, McKinnon observed. "He's got a story to tell about a successful legislative session in Republican conservative tea party terms."
Another good point, though it occurs to me the "story" we can expect Perry to tell will neglect a few details.
Like this one: That "balanced" budget has not one but two ticking time bombs in it. Lawmakers did not provide schools with money for the 80,000 additional children expected to show up at the front doors of Texas schools next year. And the state budget has $4 billion less for schools than current formulas guarantee. Whether the Legislature's actions will force local property tax hikes is anyone's guess.
Lawmakers also shortchanged Medicaid, setting aside about $4 billion to $5 billion less than analysts say will be needed. That means when the Legislature meets again in 2013, the very first matter of business facing lawmakers will be an emergency appropriations bill covering expenses from this budget cycle. Though Perry has opposed using the rainy day fund, he's signed off on a plan that does just that - but not until 2013. Or as State Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, puts it, "We've put $4.5 billion on the Medicaid Mastercard."
The Perry "story" of fiscal responsibility doesn't quite hold up for previous sessions either. While Perry takes credit for solving a significant budget shortfall in 2003, he doesn't mention the cost shifts to college students and local governments. That year, the Legislature shortchanged higher education but freed regents to raise tuition. Problem solved! Perry balanced the budget without raising taxes, but college students and their families were slammed with skyrocketing tuition.
Read more: http://www.chron.com/...
Ha ha. Mark McKinnon is a former media adviser to W., the worst President in recent U.S. history. Mark dude is as credible a source as Karl Rove.
Rick Perry and the Tea Publicans are not listening to what most of the voters want. They are listening instead to their corporate masters and to neonut Michael Quinn Sullivan. Like Grover Norquist is doing to U.S. lawmakers, Sullivan bullies and terrorizes Tea Publicans if they don't try to drown the government down the bathtub drain. I wonder know who is paying Sullivan and Norquist's salaries and why they have so much clout?
Unfortunately neither Rick Perry or the Tea Publican lawmakers have the courage to fight back at the bully. They would rather drown the people of Texas down the bathtub drain, along with the government.
Co-Chair of the President's Deficit Commission, Alan Simpson-R said that Grover Norquist is a nut. On MSNBC last week Simpson told Lawrence O'Donnell that Norquist is insane.
Norquist is known for taking out Republicans that refuse to take his pledge not to raise taxes. And MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell called him “the most powerful man in America who does not sleep in the White House.”
“What kind of a nut is this guy?” former Wyoming Sen. Alan Simpson said of Norquist. He told an audience at Wednesday’s Peter G. Peterson Foundation fiscal summit that Norquist was “some guy just wandering around the swamps taking a pledge from people when America was flush, and then pushing people like Orrin Hatch off the cliff as if he were a commie.” Simpson has said similar things to Norquist’s face
So here we have a very conservative retired Republican Senator calling Norquist insane and yet the entire GOP marches to Norquist's orders. Michael Quinn Sullivan is a Texas styled clone of Norquist.
According to David Stockman, Reagan's former OMB Director the GOP's aversion to tax increases is rank demagoguery.
As Reagan’s former budget director David Stockman has stated tax cutting for Republicans has become a religion.
“Well it’s become in a sense an absolute. Something that can’t be questioned, something that’s gospel, something that’s sort of embedded into the catechism and so scratch the average Republican today and he’ll say ‘Tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts,’” he explained.
“It’s rank demagoguery,” he added. “We should call it for what it is. If these people were all put into a room on penalty of death to come up with how much they could cut, they couldn’t come up with $50 billion, when the problem is $1.3 trillion. So, to stand before the public and rub raw this anti-tax sentiment, the Republican Party, as much as it pains me to say this, should be ashamed of themselves.”
The GOP claims to be for fiscal responsibility but they want they always want to cut taxes even when we have record deficits. Even when Republicans are given a surplus they run up huge debts.
Their real goal is simply to cut funding for any programs that help the poor and the working class. They continue to work to transfer the public treasury to the richest Americans and they are pretty good at it. But then again there’s not a real opposition party.
Given this recent legislative session we have been given a sobering refresher on how truly cruel and heartless the GOP is toward school children, the elderly, the impoverished and the homeless. Rick Perry and his Tea Publican lawmakers cut the budget for the homeless altogether.
Rick Perry has set an inhumane scenario that makes it easy for corporations to run rough shod over the environment and ruin the health and financial well being of the people in areas like Wise County in North Texas and the Houston area with its pollution and poorly regulated oil refineries. His low tax mania has yielded among the lousiest schools in the U.S., the highest number of dropouts, over crowded prisons and the highest number of uninsured residents in the U.S. With his Marie-Antoinette budget cuts school children in Texas public schools will be unable to compete in a global market place. His policies have done little to help the unfortunate and yet the Governor likes to promote himself as a Christian. He has poked his government hating nose into a woman's right to choose. Rick Perry is a like a cruel dictator who is quickly fast tracking this once great state to third world squalor.
Rick Perry and the Texas GOP own the race to third world squalor.
Go ahead Rick and run for POTUS. At least it will get you the hell out of Texas. But the Governor needs to understand that he cannot run away from the national media like he does in Texas. The Governor will also have to debate, something he refused to do in 2010.
Here in Texas, we know why.