Republican Pandering In Texas

It looks like the Republicans in Texas are starting to feel the heat in this election year. Two separate polls have now shown that Democratic senate candidate Rick Noriega is only 4 point behind the incumbent, "Box Turtle" John Cornyn (and Cornyn is polling less than 50% in both polls). In addition, the polls show that John McCain is not doing much better, and may actually be beatable in this reddest of states.

Couple this with the huge turnout in the Democratic primary in Texas this year, and you have Republican candidates all over the state running scared. It's no longer a matter of whether Democrats will make gains in this year's election, but only of how big those gains will be. Will Texas go from red to purple, or will it go all the way to blue?

The favorite Republican tactic of fearmongering doesn't seem to be working this year -- guess they've gone to that well once too often. So now they're falling back on an old stand-by -- pandering to voter greed.

State Comptroller Combs announced earlier this week that it looks like Texas will have about a $10.7 billion surplus. Speaker Craddick believes it may be $3 or $4 billion larger than that. So the Republicans, led by our inept governor Rick Perry, are now starting to talk about further tax cuts (for the rich probably) or even cash rebates.

What they won't tell you is that the surplus exists because they have been unwilling to fully fund the things that are desperately needed in Texas. We have a surplus because they refuse to:

- fully fund and extend the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

- give our schools all the money they need (especially in poor areas).

- allot enough money to repair our roads and bridges and build new ones (they'd rather build toll roads and give them away to foreign companies).

- pay our state employees a decent wage (with the possible exception of Mississippi and Oklahoma, our employees are among the lowest paid in the nation).

- create treatment and diversion programs for drug and alcohol abusers, so we can get them out of our overcrowded prisons.

- give our colleges and universities enough money to keep the cost to students low enough so everyone who wants to can get a college education.

These are just a few of the problem areas where that money is needed. But don't expect Republicans to act to solve any of these problems. They're far too busy pandering to voters to stay in power.

The funny part is, if they had acted earlier to solve these problems, they wouldn't have to be pandering now.