Crossposted from Hillbilly Report.
This is getting ridiculous. It seems as if Republicans are willing to waste money on the rich, war, and bankers but they refuse to invest in American workers or infrastructure. Just the other day every single Republican in Kentucky's delegation voted against funding to keep teachers, police, and firefighters from being laid off and I thought that was bad. However, now in Conservative stronghold Texas, they are being one-upped. You see, Texas Republicans are so mad to be having jobs saved and funding for their schools they are actually considering suing the federal government for trying to keep teachers, police and firefighters on the job.
Man, only in Republicanland will you ever hear such a story. You see, when Texas was allotted money from the stimulus bill instead of using it for what it was meant for the Republicans down there decided it would be more important to use the funding to bail themselves out of the budget jam their own irresponsibility caused instead of its intended purpose of creating jobs. This led Congressman Lloyd Doggett to introduce and amendment to keep Texas Republicans from picking the funds for teachers and other public workers clean once more:
Texas Republicans object to a Texas-only amendment crafted by the state's congressional Democrats to prevent Gov. Rick Perry and other state leaders from diverting millions of dollars in federal education assistance to other purposes. Republicans have denounced the restriction as a political stunt that would require them to violate the Texas Constitution to receive the money.
Doggett's provision stemmed from Democrats' assertions that the Republican-led state government mishandled federal stimulus money last year, using it to bail itself out of a budget jam instead of drawing from a rainy-day fund.
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
Rep. Kay Granger spewed the typical Republican garbage and hypocrisy about the bill:
"Democrats in Congress gave states $100 billion in the so-called stimulus bill last year, and now they want taxpayers to hand over $26 billion more. Enough is enough," said Rep. Kay Granger, R-Fort Worth. "Using money the federal government does not have to pay for state programs that states can't afford is unsustainable, leaving taxpayers to wonder, what happens next year?"
So, why does Granger not worry about the money given Texas that Republican leaders used to cover their own incompetence?? Does she just want all these folks to lose their jobs in this economy?? And what about all the money wasted by Republicans on War, tax cuts for the rich, and Corporate Welfare. Yes, I must agree with Granger but on a different point. Enough is enough. It is time for Republicans to shut the hell up and let someone deal with the problems Republicans caused this nation, and yes the state of Texas.
And as Rep. Chet Edwards pointed out, Republicans not only in Texas but everywhere simply cannot live with the fact that average everyday Americans should not have to foot the whole bill over the incompetence Republicans show at any level of governance. They gave tax cuts to the rich, doled out Corporate Welfare and crashed the economy, then bailed out the bankers. Now that working Americans need assistance in recovering from the Republican incompetence that threatens their livelihoods, Republicans want working America to pay instead of their greedy, wealthy, "base". They are more than willing to add 14,500 Texans to the unemployment rolls and cost their state $830 million just to act like selfish idiots:
Texas is eligible for as much as $830 million from a $10 billion pool that would enable states to rehire laid-off teachers or prevent the dismissal of others after the school year begins. The assistance could help save more than 14,000 teaching jobs in Texas, according to Education Department estimates.
But Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, whose district includes Johnson and Hood counties, said the bill "will prevent 14,500 Texas teacher and education layoffs, and reduce the need to increase school class sizes and local property taxes."
So in other words, to make some cheap political point Texas Republicans are going to sue to try and keep from taking money that will help Texan teachers, children and emergency workers. But wait, won't they then be giving business to those dreaded "trial lawyers"??
Republicans in Texas, Kentucky and everywhere in this country are pathetic. They had control over this whole government for six long years in which they passed every Corporate wet dream law they wanted. They started two failed wars that cost well over a trillion dollars, doled out Corporate Welfare and tax cuts for the rich and ran the deficit to the moon. All the while they stole from the Social Security surplus to mask just how much they had put on the taxpayer credit card. They crashed our economy off the cliff and destroyed the livelihoods of millions.
Now that people are actually trying to clean that mess up and not add to it by putting even more folks out of work all Republicans can do is cry like babies. They say no to any solution to fix the problem they caused and what are their own solutions to those problems?? Go back to the way things were being done which caused the problem to begin with, only this time use a much more extreme version of the vision they employed to mess things up so bad.
This story just shows the idiocy and hypocrisy of Republicans. Nobody but Corporate America and the wealthy profited from the booming economy in the last couple of decades and nobody but Corporate America and the very wealthy got bailed out when Republicans crashed the economy. Now, they are trying to tell us all that nobody but Corporate American and the very wealthy should receive any assistance until the economy recovers.
I really cringe when I think what will happen if this ignorant, incompetent and selfish bunch of narrow-minded freaks ever get control of our government again.