Statement Of Hank Gilbert, Democratic Candidate for Governor, on Rick Perry’s Campaign Launch Video

FACT SHEET FOLLOWS STATEMENT

TYLER—After watching Governor Rick Perry’s much-ballyhooed campaign launch video, Hank Gilbert (D-Whitehouse), Democratic Candidate for Governor of Texas, issued the following statement:

“What state was Rick Perry talking about? It can’t have been Texas.

With a straight face, this governor talked about improved education and our state’s ‘magnetic pull on jobs,’ in the midst of some of our worse unemployment numbers in history, and at a time where we lead the nation in high school dropouts. That state exists only in Rick Perry’s warped, delusional mind.

That the governor expressed such pride in the 2003 budget cuts that broke the backs of the poor and middle class is an outrage. How can he be proud of kicking so many kids off their insurance and erecting a permanent wall that kept those kids off CHIP for so long? How can he be proud of cutting services for the elderly, mentally disabled and poverty-stricken children while creating for himself a slush fund to promote economic development? It makes no sense.

To top it all off, the Governor gave his speech from a plant where the workers used to make $17 an hour and now make $10. That’s because the plant used to be in Illinois and used to be a union plant. Now, the plant has moved to a state where nearly two decades of Republican rule have resulted a giant foot on the neck of working-class Texans and small business owners while big corporations giving to the governor’s campaign coffers get tax breaks. Wages in Texas are low, small businesses and property owners are overburdened and the governor who made it all possible wants the equivalent of a lifetime appointment to lead our state further down the hole.

The workers at that plant listening to the governor should have been given hazard pay for the time they had to stand there. The lightening that was about to strike the governor for telling so many lies could have easily hit one of them.”

FACT SHEET

Perry Speak: What The Governor’s Remarks Really Mean

GOVERNOR PERRY SAYS:

“Back in 2003, we clawed our way out of a $10 billion dollar budget hole by making tough choices, and cutting spending. “

GOVERNOR PERRY MEANS:

In 2003, the Texas Legislature, with the blessing of this governor, passed one of the worst and most damning budgets in state history in terms of the treatment of the middle class and poor in this state. The 2003 Texas budget:

• Cut Medicaid Community Care Service Levels for Elderly and Disabled Texas Adults.
• Cut Medicaid Provider Rates.
• Eliminated Counseling, Podiatric, Hearing and Vision benefits for Elderly, Disabled, and Adult TANF Recipients On Medicaid.
• Reduced Medicaid Maternity Coverage For Low-Income Pregnant Women.
• Reduced the Personal Needs Allowance of Nursing Home patients.
• Eliminated Hospice, Dental, and Skilled Nursing programs from CHIP.
• Cut funding for the County Indigent Health Care Program.
• Drastically cut CHIP Benefits & Spending, Leaving Hundreds of Thousands of Texas Kids without Insurance & Costing the State more than $500 million in federal matching funds ^[1].

GOVERNOR PERRY SAYS:

“…I also line-item vetoed more than $3 billion of unnecessary spending, which is more than all other Texas governors combined.”

GOVERNOR PERRY MEANS:

Perry has done more line item vetoes than any other Texas governor because, in addition to using his line-item veto power in an almost abusive fashion, he’s been governor longer than anyone else in Texas history. Too, many of Governor Perry’s line item vetoes weren’t wasteful or unnecessary spending. Additionally, governor Perry calculates “contingency appropriation”  vetoes—line item vetoes of money appropriated for legislation that did not pass the legislature or which he vetoed, in his $3 billion figure, which is highly misleading. Governor Perry’s line item vetoes have killed:

• $9.5 million which had been appropriated to the Higher Education Coordinating Board for the Advanced Research Program. (2003)
• $22.5 million which had been appropriated for the University Research Fund (2003)
• $3 million which had been appropriated to the Texas Council on Environmental Technology (2003)
• Funding for Higher Education Employees Group Insurance Contributions for Public Community/Junior Colleges (2007)
• $5 million for an Engineering Program at West Texas A&M University (2007)
• $5 million for expansion of public health services at the UT Health Science Center-Houston. (2007)^[2]

GOVERNOR PERRY SAYS:

“As other states drive employers away…Texas is exerting a magnetic pull on jobs.”

GOVERNOR PERRY MEANS:

Actually, job loss in Texas during Governor Perry’s tenure as governor has been worse than it was in the late 1980s when the petrochemical and real estate markets went bust:

The number of Texans without a job has hit record numbers in the past several months:

Job Loss in Rick Perry’s administration has been the worst Texas has seen since the 1970s and 1986 and 1987

GOVERNOR PERRY SAYS:

“Texas is a safe harbor through this economic storm whose example can chart a course out of these tough times for the rest of the country.”

GOVERNOR PERRY MEANS:

Texas can set an example to the rest of the county on how not to do things:

• Texas ranks 7^th in among the states in the percent of our children living in poverty ^[4].
• Texas ranks 3d among the state in terms of the percentage of our population living below the Federal Poverty Level^[5].
• Texas ranks 3^rd among the nation in terms of the percent of our population with food insecurity^[6].
• Texas ranks third in the nation in terms of the percent of women in our population living in poverty^[7].

The number of uninsured Texans has increased from 4.9 million in 2001 to 6.1 million in 2008. The percent of non-elderly adults with out insurance rose from 27.8 percent to 32.1 percent. This number only considers people who are uninsured for an entire year and doesn’t include many Texans who have lost their health coverage as a result of the recession. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services)

Employer-based health plans in Texas are quickly disappearing. The percentage of employer-based health coverage decreased from 63.3 percent of the state’s population in 2001 to 55.6 percent in 2008. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services)

3.4 million Texas workers are without health insurance. The percentage of Texas workers without health insurance rose from 25.6 percent in 2001 to 29.7 percent in 2008. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health & Human Services).

Being uninsured isn’t just a problem for the poor. An additional 361,000 people from homes considered “high-income” households by the census bureau are now uninsured in Texas. (SOURCE: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services).

The current Texas Insurance Commissioner, Mike Geeslin, (a former staffer for Governor Perry), is such a pro-insurance lapdog that a leading insurance industry trade group publicly applauded his reappointment in 2005. (SOURCE: Insurance Journal, June 7, 2005; LINK).

[1] Source for 2003 Appropriations Cuts: Center for Public Policy Priorities
[2] Information taken from Governor Perry’s veto proclamations/press releases following the 81st, 80th, and 79th Texas Legislatures: http://governor.state.tx.us/files/press-office/SB_0001_VETO_proc_FINAL_6-19-09.pdf; http://governor.state.tx.us/news/press-release/4872/; http://governor.state.tx.us/news/proclamation/5438/
[3] Figures are not seasonally adjusted. Source: Texas Workforce Commission
[4] U.S. Census Bureau, R1704. Percent of Children Under 18 Years Below Poverty Level in the Past 12 Months, 2007
[5] Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, State Health Facts Onlin
[6] U.S. Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Household Food Insecurity in
the United States, 2006 (November 2007) at Table D-1.
[7] U.S. Census Bureau, Voting and Registration in the Election of November 2006, Table 4b, Reported Voting and Registration of the Voting-Age Population, by Sex, Race and Hispanic Origin, for States: November 2006