Just stop, Rick Perry. Stop it.

Yeah, that's the guy who is messing up everything for women and NOW everyone else.

In the Burnt Orange Report blog, I found a piece written by Katherine Haenschen written on March 15th about how Rick Perry plans on funding a Women's Health Program by cutting in to Health and Human Services. The author is not only appealing to Democrats, but pretty much to anyone else who has a family, children, or is disabled. For someone that wants to make sure Planned Parenthood goes extinct and make sure women are getting the care that they were ALREADY getting at PP, eating away at funds that go to more than just women and rather families as a whole seems pretty freakin' retarded.

Katherine writes,
"Last session, the legislature cut $73 million from the state's family planning budget. Those cuts caused women's health clinics across the state to lay off workers, decrease services, or shut down entirely. The sneaky Republicans didn't merely eliminate the $73 million -- they diverted $61 million into other programs that serve the disabled, children, and the elderly, thus trying to force Democrats to vote against amendments to fund these programs at the expense of family planning programs. Now, HHS will have to look for any money that hasn't been spent yet, or bills that aren't due until later in the biennium, and divert the money back to the women's health program."

Like the author said, the Republicans were sneaky. Rick Perry cut this money to rid of Planned Parenthood and knew that less than enough people would vote against funding the other programs. Now it's just a big mess and we're looking at what, I believe is to be, an unnecessary cut with little to no pasting back where it belongs. We are going to have to extract money from where we put it (into the disabled, children and elderly) into a Women's Health Program which would not even have to happen had we kept Planned Parenthood.

Not only did the legislature make that cut, but they also underfunded Medicaid's last session by $4.8 billion dollars. Good job, Perry! Way to put us in a multi-billion dollar debt all because you didn't want to back up the program at 100%, which you should have. The writer also concludes that because of this underfunding, Medicaid will face a $15-17 billion dollar shortfall. Yikes.

What we have here is a (excuse my language) shit storm provided by our governor. "Rick Perry could have continued the successful Medicaid WHP Program that provides Texas with $9 in Federal funds for every $1 in state funds we spend on women's health and family planning. Instead, he's so determined to shut down Planned Parenthood -- which Federal law says Perry cannot shut out from the women's health program -- that he'll take funding for seniors, children, and the disabled down with him if he has to."

Who voted for this guy? Seriously.

Overall, Perry is going to put our state in a tremendous amount of debt, and it seems like there is little that we can do to stop him until he realizes that he dun'goofed and that millions are suffering on his behalf. I'm really hoping he wakes up from his crazy dream or someone else takes a stand and can stop this vicious cycle before it becomes unstoppable.