A Feisty Texas Horse Comes out of the Barn: Kay Bailey Hutchison

Yesterday, I wrote on Texas Governor Rick Perry’s follies, including his secession nonsense, his refusal to accept federal funds to help the Texas unemployed, his phony anti-Washington rhetoric, and his sheer hypocrisy when it comes to rejecting and then accepting—begging for—federal stimulus funds and federal loans.

I also quoted an Austin American-Statesman editorial blasting Perry for similar politicals missteps. The Statesman used a very appropriate analogy:

The old caution about looking gift horses in the mouth doesn’t apply in politics. Gov. Rick Perry, for example, saddles up and rides away after looking in the horse’s mouth and complaining loudly about what he sees there.

Well, don’t take my word or the Statesman’s word for Perry’s lapses.

Today, in the same newspaper, we hear it straight from the horse’s mouth: U.S. Senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, a Republican.

And, yes, she’ll be challenging governor Perry for the Texas governorship.

In her commentary (“Hutchison: Political games played with your money“), Senator Hutchison pulls no punches.

Like a feisty horse fresh out of the barn, she immediately lets Perry have it:

Nothing better encapsulates our leadership problems in Austin than Gov. Rick Perry’s refusal to accept $550 million from the federal government for unemployment assistance.

To make a political statement, Perry instead turned a huge and unnecessary debt over to the state’s employers, including small business owners, during a tough economic climate.

Calling his anti-Washington rhetoric a little hypocritical, Hutchison says:

Perry says he rejected federal unemployment funding because it would require Texas to update our jobless rolls and expand payments for part-time workers. He claims that these benefits, once granted, would never be reversed by the Texas Legislature.
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So we are now about to hand a bill for $550 million to our state’s job creators as they struggle through a recession and the inequities of Perry’s 2006 margins tax. Our state unemployment rate is already higher than any of our neighboring states — Oklahoma, Louisiana, New Mexico and Arkansas. So much for Texas being better off than anywhere else.
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And Perry is now hat in hand, seeking a $643 million loan to keep Texas’ empty unemployment insurance fund solvent. Where is he going for that loan? Washington, D.C. And who will pay it back? Texas employers, through big tax hikes, starting in just a few months.

On other stimulus money, Hutchison says that while she initially fought the stimulus spending, once the laws were approved, and once Texas taxpayer money was committed, she did the best she could to make sure that Texas “got back its share of those tax dollars.”

Perry, on the other hand, in order to balance the state’s budget shortfall, Hutchison says, “accepted and spent 97 percent of the federal stimulus funds offered Texas. He wrote letters requesting the money and publicly asked Vice President Joe Biden — twice — for reassurance that Texas would receive some of it.”

In other words, according to Hutchison:

Perry talked loudly and carried a small stick. Instead of tightening our belt and enacting spending cuts as other states did, Texas turned almost exclusively to Washington for help. We now learn that Texas used a higher percentage of federal money – some $12.1 billion — to close its structural deficit than any other state. This is how our state budget was balanced.

There you have it, straight from the Texas horse’s mouth. The one that just came storming out of the barn, not the one that has been roaming around the prairie wanting to secede from the farm.

Image: Courtesy horseadvice.com