A Tea Party-infused GOP legislature in Austin is calling for $31 billion in cuts to state spending and they claim, as Gov. Perry has stated many times, that Republicans in the legislature are simply doing what the voters sent them there to do. Did the voters really send the GOP to Austin to decimate public education?
On Election Day November, 2, 2010 voters expressed support for GOP Tea Party pledges of yet more rounds of tax cuts and reduced government spending.
Most of the 37% of registered Texas voters who turned out to vote in 2010 expressed support for the GOP Tea Party philosophy that additional rounds of tax cuts and government spending cuts would help rather than hurt the economic environment for job creation in Texas.
Most 2010 voters accepted the GOP Tea Party argument that any tax supported government spending to provide for the common good of the people in areas like health care and public education are socialist big brother government plots of Democrats.
But, did most 2010 voters and the 63% of registered voters who decided not to vote understand that GOP Tea Party candidates want to eliminate government spending for what most believe are basic and critical government services? Did most of the 13,269,233 people registered to vote in Texas truly understand the GOP Tea Party agenda is to eliminate all taxes on business and the wealthy and then eliminate government spending on programs like the public education, public safety, health care for our children and our parents, road construction and maintenance and other such government services? Did the voters understand that the GOP Tea Party call even those most basic government services socialist programs that should be cut ever deeper until they are eliminated altogether?
Up until this month, most voters did not understand the magnitude or the ferocity of the attack the GOP Tea Party has mounted on basic government services, such as public education, that Texans depend on to support our democracy, provide the quality of life our families enjoy and build a better future for our children.
GOP Tea Party rhetoric has hit reality as the Texas House passes a 2011-13 budget that cuts almost $31 billion from spending levels authorized in the 2009-11 budget. "If you want to close this shortfall through cuts alone, you have to either (completely) cut payments to Medicaid providers, cut payments to school districts or lay-off a substantial number of state employees," said state Rep. Jim Pitts, the Republican chairman of the House Appropriations Committee. "You would have to do these things immediately."
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