Rick Perry does the right thing for Texas: No Medicaid expansion or health exchange

State doesn't know what it's doing but yet, it is #1 in 2011 in population growth. Do you not feel all that growth is possibly putting a strain on our public services? I guess it is easy to criticize our state when you live so far away and only read headlines with numbers attached.

 

LOL.

http://www.khou.com/home/117986259.html

HISD teachers say budget cuts are devastating .

Texas Libraries Facing Devastating Budget Cuts
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Crisis looming for rural libraries.

That's winning. Shooting yourself in the foot when you have no choice. Who needs schools and libraries functioning well?

This is winning texx.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-...-remains-untested-by-crisis-moody-s-says.html

 

I'm only really criticizing Rick Perry and his merry band of legistators who are racking up record defecits. I obviously have no qualms with your basketball teams (other than Dallas and San Antonio...I guess.)

Fiscal irresponsibility is easy to criticize. Ask the man himself; he made hay over California. Now, instead of grandstanding for political glory rather than seeing what would be right for his state, maybe he should eat some crow and ask himself if what the federal government proposes helps or hurts his state, rather than proposing some vague ideological war.

 

The destruction of Texas' long term infrastructure and prospects by Perry and his serial neglect has me rather worried about the fate of real estate holdings there that I may have an interest in one day.

Poorly done, Perry; poorly done, Texas.

 

Right, texxx. Because, you know, Spain yields aren't above 7%, JP Morgan hasn't closed European money market funds, and the ECB didn't lower the deposit rate to 0%, and the benchmark to 0.75%. LOL.

Also, attack the message rather than the messenger Texxx. Provide context if you want to be useful.

 

So the logical response is to slash those services?

 

Rick Perry makes me embarassed to be a Texan.

 

Did California close their deficit or just borrow through them? I don't recall Texas racking up 'record deficits' when choices were made to close the deficit per Texx's comments about our state laws.

Good news, at least locally, is that payrolls and receipts are up this year with many of my commercial clients in various industries. That will come full circle to the public sector within the next year or two, at which time hopefully we can rebuild our public services infrastructure that's been decimated. Putting all the people to work who have been moving here in the middle of a national recession has been challenging and a strain to our public services.

But yes, Rick Perry is a bumbling idiot.

 

For all you guys that hammer Texas for not spending enough money on education, you should be cheering this decision.

Right now 41% of the Texas budget goes to education. Health and Human Services is the second largest budget item at 32%. The largest line item in HHS is Medicaid @ $13 billion in FY12 and $18.6 in FY13

http://www.lbb.state.tx.us/Fiscal_Size-up/Fiscal%20Size-up%202012-13.pdf

That's before the Medicaid expansion would have kicked in. Texas was expected to add around 50% of Medicaid enrollment under the expansion. Once the federal subsidy expires in FY20, Texas would have been spending a MINIMUM of $27 billion a year on Medicaid.

That money would have to come from somewhere, and the biggest piece of what's left is education.

 

California may have its' problems, but at least it's not ham-handed by a pledge not to raise taxes...because, well, "NYAH."

Racking up deficits per say is, of course, impossible because of state BBAs (balenced budget amendments). It's more a figure of speech of mine. I suppose you could more accurately say projecting deficits that have to be solved by force of law, but that's way too technocratic for the idea at hand.

But the concept is there. One would have to wonder what Texas legistators would do if a gun were not pointed to their head to solve the fiscal mess they were projecting to make.

I'm glad to hear the private sector is working through its' problems, though I would counsel the state legistature to consider all options to help Texas recover from what is definitely the largest financial crisis in the last seventy years or so.

 

The private sector felt the pain in Texas from 2009 to 2011. You tax the private sector to pay for public services. Don't know how you fund public services when the state's income is down unless you're advocating borrowing the money which we can't do.

Of course, I'm personally in favor of a 1% state income tax for people making over 250k strictly to fund education [though no doubt it would be abused by admin] so our public schools never have to let go of those we depend on to teach the next generation. I'm not a hardline partisan guy like a lot of the douches in the legislature.

 

Are we really now at the point where states are openly saying "**** you" to the Federal Government and just refusing to implement things? (The Medicaid part I get is legal but refusing to implement everything else is insane)

We're one step away from bring back the doctrine of nullification.

 

Would the US be better off if it split into two? With the old South forming a new country?

 

Yea! We're #1!

Let's continue this awesome trend!

 

i think you mean numero uno

 

You going to move to France in mid-November after Obama wins re-election in a landslide?

 

Compared to our neighbors we are. We have cut the deficit enough so that our state isn't going bankrupt, you can argue if we cut from the right programs, but fiscally we are doing better than many other states.

The Legislative Budget Board is literally testifying right now at the Finance Hearing. I'll comment further later...

 

After reading a bit more...it seems Major's analysis is accurate.