Chupacabra Report

News that gets my goat..

Today’s Chronicle Lite has a column titled “Let Texas use innovation to solve food stamp woes” stating that Federal bureaucracy keeps states behind times. The article was written by state Reps. Wayne Christian, R-Center, Dan Flynn, R-Canton, Ken Paxton, R-McKinney, John Davis, R-Houston, Leo Berman, R-Tyler, Tan Parker, R-Flower Mound, and Bud Snarff, R- Dripping Member. The representatives are members of the Texas Conservative Coalition, a caucus of the Texas Legislature, also known as The Seven Dwarfs.

Frankly I’m surprised to hear this subject even raised by this bunch. They ought to be ashamed that hungry Texans are waiting over three months for emergency food aid during the worst economic downturn since the great depression. These are the same idiots that outsourced the operation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program in 2003, resulting in over 200,000 eligible children losing coverage.

Just as Governor Rick Perry suspended collection of unemployment insurance premiums the year before jobless claims spiked, these geniuses ran off over 1,000 state employees administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, just when they need to serve twice as many hungry families.

The Dwarfs write that the solution to this mess lies not in more bureaucracy, but in accountability. Too bad Texas voters have failed to hold these members accountable for causing the problem in the first place. Typically, their “don’t blame us, blame the government” response is at least three months behind the curve. Fitting. This story made the papers last September with reports that Texas was processing only 58% of applications in a timely manner, with over 43,000 families waiting anywhere from three to five months for an interview.

They go on to quarrel with the Federal directive that Texas drop it’s requirement for finger imaging of people receiving food aid. Well, if it’s fraud they’re looking for, they should head for the nearest looking glass. Maybe these goniffs should be fingerprinted when they try to spend campaign donations on fancy boots and golf outings.