Who Are These Demented Fools?

Well last night the Texas State House passed by a huge majority (98-49) a job-killing budget bill.

Job-killing.

Republicans referred to the Healthcare For All Act as the job-killing healthcare act and got away with it even though it has been the law of the land for one year now and there is not one solid piece of evidence that one job was lost because of it.

Not so this job-killing budget bill. Heck, this bill is such a job-killing budget bill that jobs have already been lost in anticipation of its passage. Ask the 91 employees of the Texas Education Agency who were riffed last month. Ask the hundred and some teachers at my local school district who were riffed on April Fool’s Day.

All around the state, educators are being told that they have no position in the next school year, all due to the fact that it was expected that the state house would pass this job-killing budget bill.

What can be on the minds of these demented fools? Are they purposely trying to drive Texas economy into a ditch? So Texans will blame Obama? Is that the reasoning?

If that is so, what a price we must pay. CNN, in this article published just after the LBB published its report on the job effects of passage of the House bill in its present form, reminded me that not only will 335,000 public sector jobs evaporate as a direct result of a 12% cut in spending, but this will drive the loss of yet another 263,000 private sector jobs because some businesses depend on the business school districts and nursing homes give them. A domino effect if ever there was one.

That’s just shy of 600,000 jobs lost in Texas.

Oddly enough, Rick Perry’s justification for pushing all of these cuts is, wait for it, job creation. I kid you not. Here is a quote from a Perry spokesperson:

“Gov. Perry firmly believes that government doesn't create jobs: entrepreneurs in the private sector do," said Katherine Cesinger, his press secretary. "We must remain committed to the fiscal principles that have helped us add more jobs than any other state in 2010, as well as lead the nation in job creation over the last decade.”

I’ll have to admit, Perry is correct in one very oblique way. With passage of this job-killing budget bill, state government no longer creates jobs if it ever did.

It destroys them.