El Paso Dem calls on Perry to halt his presidential bid

Gov. Rick Perry is wasting time on a presidential bid when he should be in Texas tackling school funding problems, U.S. Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-El Paso, said today.

Reyes said Perry should quit his bid for president, return to Texas and call a special legislative session that would allow lawmakers  to tap into the state's rainy day fund to mitigate the impact of a more than $5 billion cut to public education. Because of the cuts, Reyes said, the "Texas Education Agency is reporting that 282 school districts have requested emergency waivers to increase class sizes, including four districts in the El Paso area."

"After his poor showing in Iowa, I hope it's become sufficiently apparent to Governor Perry that the American people, including those in his own party, soundly reject his leadership and radical views," Reyes said in a statement. "Instead  of parading around the country pushing a radical Tea Party agenda, Governor Rick Perry should get to work on the issues of importance to our state."

But Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle said the governor has no plans to call a special legislative session on school funding or any other issue.

"Thanks to Gov. Perry's fiscally conservative leadership Texas has a balanced budget and has increased funding to Texas public schools by billions of dollars," Castle said in an email. "If Congressman Reyes were so concerned with Texas children he would be working to get our federal government's finances in order, not mortgaging away our children's future with trillions of dollars in federal debt."

Reyes, who is seeking reelection to his congressional seat, also touted his role in the federal government's decision to send Texas additional funding for schools.

"Under a Democratic-controlled House of Representatives, billions were sent down to Texas in emergency aid and time and time again Governor Perry and his Tea Party allies continue to play politics cheating our teachers, children and schools," Reyes said. "Governor Perry managed to divert large portions of those funds to prop-up the state's Rainy Day Fund. 

"Despite these actions, the latest round of federal funds through the Education Jobs and Medicaid Assistance Act of 2010 funneled about $28 million to El Paso area school districts, and I am proud to have worked with my Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives to make this happen."

To that, Castle retorted,  "the Education Jobs funds that Congressman Reyes references finally made their way to Texas schools because of Gov. Perry working with the delegation to overturn the anti-Texas Doggett Amendment, which Congressman Reyes voted for."

Two years ago, Perry and state legislators used $3.25 billion in federal stimulus funds for education to balance the budget and avoid drawing down the rainy-day fund. Last year, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, at the request of more than two dozen superintendents in the state, added a provision into a federal jobs bill that required Perry to promise the federal government that education funding would not be disproportionately cut in order to access $830 million intended to prevent teacher layoffs.

Republicans later managed to repeal the Texas-specific provision.

 

 

 

Comments

[D Hernandez]

Reyes should focus on doing his own job before he criticizes anyone else...Perry has done more for Texas while in office than Reyes has. I wish someone would do some hard reporting and show what Reyes has "really" done for El Paso. If it weren't for the problem of straight ticket voting in El Paso Reyes would never have been reelected.

[ProudUSAVet]

Why don't the Democrats tell Obama to quit campaigning when he's going to lose the election? Stop spending the taxpayers' money flying all over the place (Including his $4 million vacation to Hawaii and the $300,000 that it cost the govt. to fly Michell to Hawaii because she didn't want to wait for him). He is AWOL from his job which might just be ok since he doesn't know what he is doing anyway.