Everybody just settle down! I know, right? Texas being the voice of reason goes to show just how far off the tracks DC has become. And not just any Texans, because I know how people love to hate on dear ol' Texas, but Texas Republicans!
And not just any Texas Republicans, but arch-conservatives that sometimes make Attila the Hun look like a tree-hugging liberal. We're talking CAVE People, Citizens Against Virtually Everything. But yet, somehow, they have all seen the light and have joined rest of us in the Lone Star in our new Age of Reason.
We've been quite quiet about our revolution, but it is already starting to bear fruits of a new era for the greatest place on Earth. An example of our Magnolia Spring is Texas Republicans supporting Planned Parenthood.
That is not a typo.
Some Cuts to Texas Budget Actually Cost Money
by Ross Ramsey, The Texas Tribune
http://www.texastribune.org/...
“I don’t care for Planned Parenthood,” Sen. Robert Deuell, R-Greenville, told the Houston Chronicle after the House votes. But, he added, “I don’t want to cut access to family planning. I don’t want to decrease access. One way to stop abortions is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.” Another conservative, Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, echoed that sentiment: “We need to help women who need our assistance with family planning or contraceptives to not have a baby when they can’t care for it.”
If the budget cuts remains, however, they might cost more than they save. Four years ago, lawmakers considered a so-called trigger bill that would have made abortions illegal in Texas if the U.S. Supreme Court ever overturned Roe v. Wade. It didn’t pass, but the episode showed how the money moves around.
Sen. Deuell penned that bill, now he has come home with the cows of reason on Planned Parenthood.
Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, a very arch-conservative from East Texas, Dallas, the Swingers Capital in Texas, is now in favor of handing out condoms over abstinence programs. I am very proud of her for seeing the logic of a fact-based reality.
The reasoning was that without any abortions, more babies would be born in Texas, and that since more than half of the births in the state of Texas are paid for by Medicaid, the cost of those additional births would be borne almost entirely by taxpayers. It didn’t account for the health care and other social services that would follow from that. (Chisum let it stand, telling anyone who asked that he supported the trigger bill and that it was worth the cost to the state.)
Shrinking the state’s family planning services wouldn’t be as drastic, or as expensive, but it would cost money because it would result in an increase in babies paid for by Medicaid. And to the extent that this is about money, and not about policy or politics or philosophy, it wasn’t a smart series of cuts. It costs more than it saves.
There you have it folks, I don't agree with my fellow Texan's political philosophies here, but at least they are grounded by fiscal fact.
I find it amazing that Texas has moved on from the kabuki theater DC loves so much. I mean, we're suppose to be the ass-backwards ones, right? Isn't that the joke everyone loves to tell during their two minutes of hate on poor ol' Texas?
And yet, here we have radical conservatives making more sense than the entire US Senate.
So remember, as this play of ideology plays out this afternoon, Texas Republicans are now more progressive than the US Congress.
(Diariest Note: Okay Dallas, I'll let you off the hook today, but we will be revisiting the Dallas/East Texas relationship another day. Today we got bigger fish to fry.)