Hypocrisy Is Bigger In Texas, Too

Kay at Balloon Juice flags up this NY Times story on Texas politicians vowing to stop health care reform on one hand and repeal the additional money because of deficit and supremacy concerns...and taking that additional money now with the other hand while the legal battle drags out.

There are more uninsured residents of Texas — 6.1 million and counting — than there are people in 33 states. The state’s elected officials might be expected, therefore, to cheer a federal health care law that is likely to deliver billions of dollars from Washington to Austin and cover millions of low-income Texans.


Instead, the Republican political leadership has greeted the law and its anticipated costs with open hostility, leaving policy makers to move forward with a complex set of changes even as the governor, attorney general and ranking legislators rage against it. The same awkward dichotomy exists in many of the 21 states that are challenging the health reform act’s constitutionality, but are nonetheless required to follow it while their lawsuits meander through the courts.

In Austin, legislative hearings and agency planning sessions proceed despite Gov. Rick Perry’s vow to fight “on every front available” against a law that he characterizes as “socialism on American soil.” Bureaucrats apply for federal grants and collaborate with the Obama administration at the same time that Attorney General Greg Abbott strategizes to eviscerate the law in court. 

So Texas is busy reaping the benefits of being a large red state under the horrors of socialism.  Funny how that works out.  As Kay points out:

Health care reform going to the states is a good opportunity for Democrats to start countering Republican’s abstract theories on state’s rights by telling the truth: that this relationship is long-standing and mutually beneficial, every politician at the state level knows it, and that’s the real reason it isn’t going away. 

Especially benefiting from all this are southern and western red states.  "Obama's Socialism" here means that ten states are currently getting $1.50 or more in tax dollars from the feds for each dollar residents pay in taxes, and 2, Mississippi and New Mexico, get more than $2 from the feds for ever buck they put in the pot.  Texas was getting 94 cents on the dollar, and under health care reform they're getting even more now, enough to put them into positive territory.

If Texans understood that under Obama their state gets more money now than they would pay in those horrible federal taxes, some of them might stop complaining about Obama so much...so of course Texas Republicans are trying to hide the fact that Obama's being good to the Lone Star State.  As a matter of fact, a whole hell of a lot of red states are getting sweetheart deals.

It's the blue states getting screwed on taxes.  New Jersey?  They get 61 cents back for every dollar they put in.  Chris Christie actually has something to complain about, as does Arnold and California's 78 cents on the dollar.  You'd better believe those states are taking the federal money.

Texas?  They're actually doing pretty well.