Acerbic Politics

Monday, June 01, 2015

Remember That Time Texas Republicans Refused $100 Billion In Federal Aid?

In 2012, when the right-leaning Supreme Court ruled that individual states could opt out of the part of of the Affordable Care Act that required states to expand Medicaid, Texas jumped at the opportunity. A year later Governor Rick Perry bragged to Tea Party groups across the nation that he beat President Obama’s attempt to extend healthcare to his state’s working poor. That same year Attorney General, now Governor, Greg Abbott boasted proudly to the press that he had sued the Obama Administration 24 times in less than four years. Between the two of them, they wasted billions of dollars and ensured that the most vulnerable Texans would remain without healthcare, all while claiming they didn’t believe in reckless spending. Two years later, Texas is expected to ask for billions of dollars in federal disaster aid after floods have ravaged the state.
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When Rick Perry opted out of Medicaid expansion, he cost his state $100 billion dollars in federal aid for healthcare over ten years. This money would have paid for healthcare for more than a million struggling families in the state where more than a quarter of its population is uninsured. He was proud that he was governing the state with the largest number of uninsured people (Source).
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Perry spoke at Tea Party rallies and gleefully informed them that “Texas will not be held hostage by the Obama administration’s attempt to force us into this fool’s errand of adding more than a million Texans to a broken system.” He essentially forced more than a million Texans to live in fear; the fear that they were just one illness away from financial devastation.
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Governor Greg Abbott was just as proud as Perry that he sued the Obama Administration 24 times while he was Texas’ Attorney General. He once told the Associated Press,”I go into the office, I sue the federal government and I go home.” His 24 lawsuits against the federal government cost taxpayers in his state more than 2 million dollars between 2009 and 2012.
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Both Abbott and Perry claim that they are fiscal conservatives; they don’t believe in unnecessary spending. The reality is, Republican policies have absolutely nothing to do saving money and everything to do with punishing the poor.
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