A Budget Is A Moral Document. This One Failed.
A front-row seat to the Texas House’s most cynical day yet.
https://www.lonestarleft.com/p/a-budget-is-a-moral-document-this
There’s a story that every American is told as they grow up in this country. It’s a comforting fiction that despite our differences, our government is working toward the same general goals: a thriving economy, safer streets, healthier families, and a better life for our children. We’re taught that the disagreements between parties are just differences in approach and philosophy. And that disagreement isn’t one of morality or motive. That was a story I believed, once.
But belief is fragile. It erodes quietly, not with grand betrayals but with days like yesterday. A day when Republicans voted to block broadband for their own rural constituents. When they rejected a study on the economic damage of Trump’s tariffs. When they took $70 million from Medicaid to fund fake clinics that lie to desperate women. When they voted down a dashboard tracking hunger, eviction, and school lunch debt, because it might show the consequences of their choices. When they tried (twice) to defund public universities for teaching about race, gender, or queer people. When they tried to send $100 million to private prisons. When 42 of them refused to support a study of child abuse by religious leaders. When they fought harder for ideology and punishment than for facts, fairness, or basic humanity, and then called it governance.
In moments like this, the old story collapses, and a darker question emerges. What drives the modern right? Is it blind faith in trickle-down fantasies? Is it contempt disguised as conviction? Or something more hollow, perhaps a cynical performance of power for its own sake?
Whatever the answer, the consequences are real. And they are devastating.