Texas Legislature Defunds Texas Governor

When one person turns up his nose at $555 million proffered to the unemployed and underemployed in his state, you know things are going to go bad for him.

First, Governor Perry says “No” to over half a billion dollars meant to alleviate the pain of thousands of Texans who are caught without jobs in a dried-up job market, then the Legislature vows to step up and accept the funding. And yesterday, in a preliminary vote, it looks like the Texas Senate is going to do just that.The twelve Senate Democrats were joined by 10 of their Republican colleagues in passing the measure that would change Texas law to enable the state to accept the federal dollars.

Because when it is a choice between making thousands of lives more comfortable in these uncomfortable times, and making a petty political point, the Legislature opts for the former, and the Governor is usually a chump for the latter.

And in a fit of pique, the Governor again made a laughing stock of himself and 18% of all Texans in his veiled threat to exercise Texas’ unique ability to secede from the Union rather than knuckle under to the pressures from Washington. A unique ability that exists only in the minds of the clueless.

Earlier the governor announced that he will veto any legislation that they pass to enable Texas to claim these funds from the federal government.

This was followed close on with a House vote for a constitutional amendment that would allow legislators to return to a legislative session after it had ended for the purpose of overriding any vetoes a governor makes after the legislative session ends.

Back and forth, back and forth.

And now it appears that the legislature is upping the ante. They are voting to defund the governor’s office. From the Austin American-Statesman:

“The House voted this afternoon to strip almost all of the money out of the budget Gov. Rick Perry uses to pay his staff and operate his office.”

“During debate over the proposed state budget for the next two years, the House voted for an amendment by Rep. Jessica Farrar, D-Houston, to move about $4 million from the governor’s office to veterans’ programs.”

“Then the House approved an amendment sponsored by Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, to more than $18 million out of the governor’s office and into mental health crisis services.“

And in one more move, after whittling more and more from the governor’s office in order to fund some really much-needed projects (implying, I guess, that the governor’s office is anything but much-needed), the legislature informed the governor that he could keep his $136 million Enterprise Fund if Texas could get that $555 million from the feds.

See what you can accomplish when bipartisanship rules the day?