Texas House votes to slash Gov. Rick Perry's budget 06:46 PM CDT on Friday, April 17, 2009
AUSTIN — House members virtually wiped out Gov. Rick Perry’s office budget today, to help veterans and the mentally ill. With little debate, the House on a voice vote approved erasing 96 percent of the nearly $24 million budget writers had recommended for Perry’s office operation over the next two years. Some Democrats cast the House’s move as a rebuke of the governor’s recent comments about Texas seceding from the Union. “That’s the headline: Two days after governor says we ought to secede, House zeroes out the governor's budget,” Appropriations Committee Vice Chairman Richard Raymond, D-Laredo, told reporters. However, most Republicans said they went along simply to speed debate of the state budget – a debate that could last into Saturday. “At the end of the day, the governor will be fully funded,” said House GOP Caucus Chairman Larry Taylor, R- Friendswood. Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said, “I think they’re just playing silly games.” The move was initially confusing because a Republican authored one of two amendments gutting Perry’s budget, not counting the more than a half-billion his office doles out to law enforcement, businesses and filmmakers. It came as the House debated a two year, $178.4 billion budget that includes $11 billion of federal stimulus money but protects a state ‘rainy day fund’ expected to swell in two years to $9.1 billion. The first whack at Perry’s budget was by House Democratic Caucus Chairman Jessica Farrar, D-Houston. She took $4 million for veterans’ programs. Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, noted Farrar had seven different floor amendments that would siphon funds from Perry’s office or the state-federal office in Washington that he controls. King, asked why Republicans didn’t object to zeroing out the GOP governor’s budget, said, “We were just trying to avert any unnecessary gamesmanship.” Taylor said Democrats were “trying to make the other side make bad votes that they can use in the campaign or p.r.” Farrar denied trying to put GOP members on record rejecting money for deserving Texans such as veterans and the needy. “I was looking to do something for people in hard economic times," she said. “I think it’s funny [Republicans] were mentioning gamesmanship because how many times have they put us in this position? ... When they were in the minority, they made us cast a lot of votes that were used against us.” Rep. John Davis, R-Houston, took a bigger bite in Perry's office budget. His proposal would switch $18.7 million from the governor to community mental health “crisis services” that try to keep the mentally ill out of jail and hospital emergency rooms. “I’m not mad at Perry,” Davis said later. “I just need money and this is how the game is played.” Davis said his plan would “fully fund” last session's push to do better by the seriously mentally ill people who he said can live successfully at home, if treated. Rep. Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie, the House’s chief budget writer, dodged questions about whether he would defend the reductions of Perry’s office in upcoming budget talks with the Senate. Pitts said the move “doesn’t have anything to do with the mood on the governor.” He cast it as driven by members’ desire to avoid spending “about two hours” talking about Perry’s office. Meanwhile, the Senate squabbled along partisan lines about whether budget writers violated the federal economic recovery law’s intent. All 12 Democrats except Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, a key budget writer, wrote U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan complaining that a couple of billion of stimulus money aimed at education is being held back by Texas budget writers “for use as future property tax cuts that primarily benefit the wealthy.” In a response sent to congressional Democrats from Texas, Perry and the Legislature’s top Republicans, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker Joe Straus, denied any misuse of stimulus funds. The rainy day fund that is being protected, to pay for state needs next session, gets money automatically, they wrote. Sen. Steve Ogden, R-Bryan, the Senate’s chief budget writer, dismissed as “a political partisan comment” his Democratic colleagues’ comment about the tax cuts mostly helping the rich. http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/041909dntexhousebudget.e4ed7a0a.html function autoFeed(theFeed){ var script = document.createElement('link'); script.type = "application/rss+xml"; script.rel = "alternate" script.title = "LOCAL/NEWS Top Stories " script.href = "http://www.dallasnews.com/"; + theFeed; document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(script); } var rssFile = "rss/" var rssLink = ""; var qs = '/newskiosk/rss/dallasnewslatestnews.xml' if (qs.length > 1) { rssFile = qs.substring(1,qs.length); if (rssFile.substring(0,1) == "/") { rssFile = rssFile.substring(1,rssFile.length); } autoFeed(rssFile); } rssLink = ""; yahooLink = "" div#article_tools_bottom a { font-size:9px; } --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "WebTV Dawgs/Dittos" group. 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