Don't Mess With Texas, Unless You're a Federal Handout Then They Can't Get Enough

I vividly remember being explained to by a friend that the more conservative states, especially that of Texas, were experiencing a lesser extent of the recession. Mainly, my friend stated numerous times, was because the Red States were utilizing conservative principles to guide their state budgets. Unlike how George W. Bush led the federal government, Republican governors were actually controlling spending while keeping taxes, unemployment and recession symptoms to a minimum.  You see, Bush simply didn't govern like a Republican.

I laughed the whole time my friend was explaining his economic theory to me. We were at a bar so it's not like I could bring up a document on the Internet to prove him wrong. The more I laughed the more he insisted he was right and that Texas was a microcosm for the whole nation.

My friend, of course, was mainly repeating what he was hearing in the MSM and from his hate radio.

Writing in National Review, Rich Lowry called Texas prudent and stable especially compared to the implosion of California, a disastrous model Lowry claimed President Obama wanted to follow.

Right wing hero, Republican economist Arthur Laffer, called Texas a counterexample to liberal economic policies.

Fruity Newty Gingrich, writing on the Bush-era famed website of the American Enterprise Institute, called Texas a "pro-business, anti-waste model that could be replicated across the country."

And Space Alien Man Child, Ross Douthat wrote on the most read op-ed page in America that President Obama should adopt Texas' Red State economic strategy for the rest of the country.

My friend was simply passing on information he had heard from Republican talking heads.  Information that is as inaccurate as saying Iraq had something to do with 9/11-- another favorite talking point by Republicans.

Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Texas, which crafts a budget every two years, was facing a $6.6 billion shortfall for its 2010-2011 fiscal years. It plugged nearly all of that deficit with $6.4 billion in Recovery Act money, allowing it to leave its $9.1 billion rainy day fund untouched.

"Stimulus was very helpful in getting them through the last few years," said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies for the National Association of State Budget Officers, said of Texas.

Even as Perry requested the Recovery Act money, he railed against it. On the very same day he asked for the funds, he set up a petition titled "No Government Bailouts."

I just wonder at what point does publicly decrying federal stimulus money while privately lobbying to get as much of it as you can to fix your state budget become psychotically delusional?

(h/t Jon Chait)