Homeland Security Outtakes

Homeland Security has been reduced to buzzword status, and Governor Rick Perry’s ideas for a larger border security budget make for a sick joke. Securing the people of The United States by adding protective measures along the country’s border with Mexico seems logical. Stop the problem before it reaches American soil. That is simply brilliant. In pursuit of making Texas a safer state, Perry has signed a bill increasing the border security budget; the extra money is additional state funding beyond the more than $100 million dollars dedicated to Texas Homeland Security. According to an article by Lynn Brezosky of the Austin American Statesman (http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/06/07/7border.html), the supplementary funding will pay for “a Border Security Council appointed by the governor to assist in allocating homeland security money, establishes a system for mutual aid during emergencies and expands law enforcement agencies' ability to use wiretapping.” This strategy would seem like an effective measure if the agenda in Texas did not also include a 1,200 foot hole in its border with Mexico.
This gap in the Texas-Mexico border will come in the form of a quarter-mile wide superhighway, known in Texas as the Trans-Texas Corridor. It would connect the landlocked cities in central Mexico, through Texas, and eventually to a hub in Kansas City. Hypocritically enough, proposals exist that would allow illegal immigrants to travel into Kansas City, apparently promoting trade. Trade goods, such as drugs and people, are sure to be some of the more lucrative sellers. Furthermore, this highway is a poor solution to anyone sinking more money into Homeland Security issues in Texas. In addition to the highway, the Trans-Texas Corridor will also include railcars, oil, gas, and water pipelines; the costs of protecting this enormous project would be staggering, if not impossible. Border security and the Trans-Texas Corridor existing simultaneously is a joke, and Texas cannot support both.

The Texas Health Care Catastrophe

No pun intended, but the lack of health care in Texas is sickening. Health insurance provides for one of the most crucial of basic human needs. Medicine, as a necessity, closely follows air, water, and food, and its importance should be obvious and beyond question to anyone. However, according to statistics released by Centers for Disease Control (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hus/hus06.pdf), Texas has had the largest percentage of uninsured citizens for more than a decade. Ten years of being dead last, and proposals to begin mending this statewide atrocity continually fall short.
President Bush is threatening to veto a bill that would grant health insurance to an extra three million children from low-income families stating, “If Congress continues to insist upon expanding health care through the SCHIP [State Children's Health Insurance Program] program — which, by the way, would entail a huge tax increase for the American people — I'll veto the bill.” With the majority of American’s currently against funding the Iraqi conflict, it seems reasonable that taxes could simply be more appropriately allocated without being increased. Furthermore, in an article in the Austin American Statesman (http://www.statesman.com/news/content/region/legislature/stories/07/10/0710frew.html), author April Castro explains that the additional health care funding would increase preventative care measures. Castro quotes Nancy Seale, chairwoman of the department of pediatric dentistry at the Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas, who said “we would expect there to be a decrease in occurrences and severity (of preventable dental disease), so we would have less children who are in pain, less children who have to go to the operating room under general anesthesia, and that would save a lot of money.” The health and monetary advantages of preventative medicine are not being questioned, and for those reasons, this bill should not be in question.