Clay Robison, the author of this piece, wears two hats at the Chronicle. He's a "reporter" and he's a columnist. It's pretty hard to tell the difference in his pieces.
Here's his editorial column today:
Witness elephants crying crocodile tears
By CLAY ROBISONCopyright 2003 Houston ChronicleGov. Rick Perry's clumsy effort to revive vaudeville with his newly contrived bleeding-heart, crocodile-tear act over state spending is fooling only the foolish.
Yes, that was our governor -- backed by a troupe of other Republican actors -- hitting the road last week to juggle the truth, bemoaning, as he did, legislative inaction on such important needs as more trauma care and Medicaid funding.
Yes, he is the same Rick Perry who was so concerned about the plight of the needy this past spring that he insisted that spending on health care and other critical programs be slashed, so that he and lawmakers could balance a new budget without a modest tax increase.
And, you bet, he is the same governor who, only a few months ago, allowed a group of wheelchair-bound Texans to be arrested for peacefully protesting budget cuts outside his office.
Now, Perry is feigning religion. Angered that 11 Democratic state senators have fled to New Mexico to continue blocking action on a congressional redistricting bill favoring Republicans, the governor is unfairly -- and preposterously -- blaming them for budgetary problems he and other tight-fisted Republicans largely created.
Each of the 11 senators most likely would have voted for a reasonable increase in taxes last spring to meet budgetary needs the governor and other Republicans didn't consider so critical then.
You also, by the way, may have caught state GOP Chair Susan Weddington's acrobatic "save the poor" routine in support of the governor.
Weddington issued a statement last week accusing the 11 Democrats of "costing the people of Texas millions in education and health care funding."
Three months ago, she suggested that it was no big deal if low-income Texans were deprived of public health care services. They, she said then, could simply make do with a "little less disposable income or a little less inheritance from Mom and Dad."
It is true that as long as the Democrats continue to boycott the Senate, legislative action will be delayed on several funding-related bills during this special session.
Perry said it was particularly crucial that the Legislature decide how to spend an additional $167 million in federal matching funds for Medicaid. He said the extra money could be used to lessen the impact of a scheduled 5 percent reduction in rates paid to hospitals and doctors caring for the needy.
But the governor and the Legislative Budget Board could decide how to spend those funds and make certain other spending decisions without the full Legislature's approval.
Perry never would have called a special session simply to decide how to spend the Medicaid money. But it makes a convenient cover now for his top priority -- a redistricting bill that would allow more Republicans to be elected to Congress.
If the governor really wants the full Legislature to act on funding issues now -- including a bill to give state leaders the flexibility to spend several hundred million dollars in new federal funds and money vetoed from the state budget by Perry -- all he and other Republicans have to do is agree to give up on redistricting, an unnecessary issue they never should have tried to force upon lawmakers in the first place.
But Perry's partisan priority apparently is still stronger than his concern for spending needs.
Poking fun at the Democratic senators, the Texas Republican Party announced that it was sending them a "care package," including "child leashes to keep them firmly attached" to national Democratic leaders who, according to the GOP, ordered the walkout.
I don't know if national Democratic leaders ordered the senators to flee or not, although I am sure they are encouraging them to continue to fight redistricting.
I also am sure that the U.S. House's Republican leader, Tom DeLay of Sugar Land, is just as strongly encouraging Perry and Texas Republicans to ram a redistricting bill through the Legislature.
Perry and Weddington, tears and all, remain firmly leashed to DeLay, whose heart bleeds for more partisan power.
Robison is chief of the Chronicle's Austin Bureau. clay.robison@chron.com
