Slog
News & ArtsThursday, July 7, 2011
2012 Rick Perry Will "Balance" the Budget Through Any Goddamned Means Necessary
Posted by Paul Constant on Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 11:19 AM
The Washington Post ran a story about the bad situation in Texas, including tricks by Governor Rick Perry to make himself look like a fiscally smart presidential candidate:
Texas lawmakers started the year promising to make hard choices to solve the largest budget shortfall in the state’s history. They delivered one speech after another about not “kicking the can” down the road.
Yet that’s exactly what they did.
Gov. Rick Perry signed a budget that was balanced only through accounting maneuvers, rewriting school funding laws, ignoring a growing population and delaying payments on bills coming due in 2013.
There's much more, and you should read it. Get a load of this sentence: "The first accounting shift was to delay a $2.3 billion payment owed to public schools in 2012-2013 by one day, so that the bill isn’t technically due until 2014, thereby going into the next budget." They pulled a similar trick with Medicare, too. That's totally fucking irresponsible, image-based politicking. This smoke-and-mirrors budget is the clearest sign yet that Perry is planning on jumping into the presidential race.
1
Gah. I so, so wish Molly Ivins were still around. She'd wield her pen like a machete through this jungle of bullshit.
2
Man, Oil money is the WORST thing to happen to Texas. It ensures that the morons there politically invulnerable and props up some of the most lopsided set of idiotic economic policies in the country.
Without oil and natural gas Texas would be just another obesity-filled, dusty hot, creaking shit hole, with the occasional ghettoized paranoid liberal neighborhoods desperately hiding the only good restaurants and refuges of culture.
Peak-oil will be the best thing to ever happen to that place.
Without oil and natural gas Texas would be just another obesity-filled, dusty hot, creaking shit hole, with the occasional ghettoized paranoid liberal neighborhoods desperately hiding the only good restaurants and refuges of culture.
Peak-oil will be the best thing to ever happen to that place.
3
We (Texans) went through explaining all of this to the rest of the nation back in 2000 with George W Bush: what the government of Texas is doing has very little to do with what the governor wants; governors make a nice figurehead, but they're about as useful as tits on a bull. A huge amount of power rests in the hands of other statewide officeholders and the Texas Legislature.
This sort of budget would have passed whether Perry is running for president or dog catcher. The tea-partiers managed to stop most new revenue sources (either taxes or fees) but know that actually cutting things to the point required to get a balanced budget without accounting tricks is political suicide. We've done this sort of thing before, we'll do it again. State employees don't get paid at all in August but get paid twice in September thanks to a similar delay that has been carried over budget cycle after budget cycle. (That was always fun as a college student who worked for the university--I had to race my due-on-the-3rd-no-exceptions rent check to the bank one year because, with Labor Day, I didn't get paid until the 4th.)
This sort of budget would have passed whether Perry is running for president or dog catcher. The tea-partiers managed to stop most new revenue sources (either taxes or fees) but know that actually cutting things to the point required to get a balanced budget without accounting tricks is political suicide. We've done this sort of thing before, we'll do it again. State employees don't get paid at all in August but get paid twice in September thanks to a similar delay that has been carried over budget cycle after budget cycle. (That was always fun as a college student who worked for the university--I had to race my due-on-the-3rd-no-exceptions rent check to the bank one year because, with Labor Day, I didn't get paid until the 4th.)
4
@2 I happen to be a fat, gay, liberal who lives in one of those ghettoized neighborhoods, but, as a native Texan, those are still fighting words.
6
and that's exactly what TPawl did to us in MN. the shut down is frustrating as hell, but i'm thankful, at least, that governor dayton has the stubbornness not to cave to their "no tax increase" bullshit.
7
Um... Aren't those the same kind of tricks we're using here in Washington? Delayed payments and squabbling over the definition of "ample funding."
8
@6, I'm in MN too and this shit drives me nuts. I'm glad Dayton isn't caving (yet) to the Repubs but I get sick every time they talk about "postponing school payments" and pretending that means they are actually balancing the budget.
9
I used to live in Texas, and a friend of mine had a job with the state as an advocate for blind and visually impaired children (I forget her actual title). She'd go around and make sure kids got their eyesight tested as early as possible to get them into state-provided eyeglasses and such, to insure that bad eyesight didn't turn into a learning disablity and so on.
She said it was standard for her department head to drop kids from the case load at the end of the reporting period to bring the numbers down to where they were 'supposed' to be. Some time would go buy, and parents and schools would start calling asking what happened to the glasses, prescription eye drops, checkups, etc. for such and such kid, and that's when the case workers would notice that the kids files had been closed. Then they'd have to reopen the case, which took time and money. But, the metrics for the department looked good for that one snapshot moment.
She said it was standard for her department head to drop kids from the case load at the end of the reporting period to bring the numbers down to where they were 'supposed' to be. Some time would go buy, and parents and schools would start calling asking what happened to the glasses, prescription eye drops, checkups, etc. for such and such kid, and that's when the case workers would notice that the kids files had been closed. Then they'd have to reopen the case, which took time and money. But, the metrics for the department looked good for that one snapshot moment.
10
I'm going to say it right now: this man is going to be the Republican candidate for president. I feel it in my political bones.
11
@10
i think there is a good possibility you are right. and if this country chooses another lunatic texas governor as its president, then we will be getting what we deserve.
i think there is a good possibility you are right. and if this country chooses another lunatic texas governor as its president, then we will be getting what we deserve.
12
@ 1 - Word. Straight. Up.
Rick Perry is like a big ol' dog turd that has been laying in the sun for so long that it's turned white and powdery. Just an embarrassment, and something that somebody should have done something about long ago.
Rick Perry is like a big ol' dog turd that has been laying in the sun for so long that it's turned white and powdery. Just an embarrassment, and something that somebody should have done something about long ago.
13
Sound like Perry is running for President, because he probably doesnt want to be around when the financial tsunami hits the state. When he loses, he'll hold a press conference to say that he wont seek re-election as Govenor in 2014.
14
Similar to what Texas did in 2000 under bush. They changed the fiscal year to 13 months for income but not expenses, or to 11 months for expenses but not income (whichever it was -- same effect). When the discrepancy "hit", bush was no longer governor...and it became perry's problem to solve.
15
@3, you're pretty much entirely incorrect - or at least you're only correct when there's a Democratic governor. Rick Perry is championing every damn boneheaded thing the state government is doing.
Now, don't get me wrong: if he weren't prepared to toe the party line, he wouldn't get his way. That is, however, exactly what he wants to do.
Anyway, I wish y'all would stop running stories about Rick Perry on Slog. I left Texas to get away from that shithead. A daily dose of him is liable to make me have an aneurysm.
Now, don't get me wrong: if he weren't prepared to toe the party line, he wouldn't get his way. That is, however, exactly what he wants to do.
Anyway, I wish y'all would stop running stories about Rick Perry on Slog. I left Texas to get away from that shithead. A daily dose of him is liable to make me have an aneurysm.
Advertisement
Most Commented on Slog
-
Hating People Doesn't Make Them Thinner by Jen Graves
-
Los Angeles Gay Bar Bans Bachelorette Parties Until Marriage Equality Is Attained by David Schmader
-
Fill in the Blank by Grant Brissey
-
This Reminds Me of the Great Calculator Scare of the Late '70s/Early '80s by David Schmader
-
The Sunday Morning News by Unpaid Intern
-
Idiot Tries to Defend Bigoted Anti-Gay-Marriage Preacher on Anderson Cooper by Paul Constant
-
Six Moms with Too Much Time on Their Hands and a Shitty Website Decide to Fight Gay Superheroes by Paul Constant
-
Former Sen. Alan Simpson (R-WY) Says Members of His Party Have Rocks for Brains by Charles Mudede
-
The Saturday Morning News by Unpaid Intern
-
What the Hell Is Wrong With Seattle's Pride Parade? by Dominic Holden
RSS
Facebook
Twitter
Comments (15) RSS