State Rep. Myra Crownover (R-64)
I ran into my former State Representative, Myra Crownover, at Congressman Michael Burgess' town hall meeting in Denton Saturday and took the opportunity to speak with her afterwards for a few moments.
Rep. Crownover served as the Subcommittee Chair in this spring's Legislature that oversaw the acceptance and distribution of funds from President Barack Obama's stimulus package. Her analysis of the legislation was that, "It was a thinly-veiled attempt at income redistribution--and not very thin at that!"
Regarding the health care legislation now before Congress, she referred to the New York State Medicare and Medicaid system, which she stated "is 40% fraud and abuse." This statistic refers to a statement issued by the State of New York according to Rep. Crownover, and her point was that we don't want the government in charge of health care when a State does such a poor job of overseeing its own program as does New York.
Rep. Crownover's sentiments were mirrored by a sign that read, "If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free!"
Regarding State programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, Crownover stated that Texas sent Legislative staff to California in 2003 to offer assistance consulting with that State on its budget difficulties using Texas strong position as a model. She stated, "We were refused our input outright." This should be considered given California's poor budget position at present.
The reason such a consideration is valid is best illustrated by the conversations held by the men who wrote the Constitution itself. At Philadelphia in 1787 the Framers discussed almost on a daily basis their concern for and opposition to the redistribution of wealth across State lines. Their comments are preserved in James Madison's notes on the deliberations.
The danger to Texas is that we are now the most soundly managed State in the nation, and California is among the worst as warranted by its present situation involving IOU's to contractors, layoffs of State workers and such. As Crownover stated, "The concern is that Washington will come knocking on Austin's doorstep informing the State that we've done a good job managing our finances and that they are therefore earmarking Texas' funds for States like California."
And lastly, I approached Rep. Crownover to discuss transportation with her briefly. I mentioned that I spoke with Rep. Linda Harper Brown of Irving last Wednesday on transportation and Crownover stated, "I confer with Linda on transportation issues quite frequently."
Crownover stated, "I think that we did the right thing on the transportation bill" in both the spring legislative session as well as the subsequent special session. "The bill that was presented contained too many bad things and it was best to kill it. Leadership on the issue was just not present, thus there were too many problems with the legislation." For further comments on transportation in Texas, see my series on my conversation with Rep. Brown.
Lastly, Rep. Crownover stated several times that elected officials are paying attention to States' Rights and 10th Amendment issues, which is encouraging. Unfortunately, having been a vocal advocate of the same for the preceding two years in online content, I question the sincerity of these elected officials who did everything they could the last 8 years to support President Bush and Gov. Rick Perry when their policies did everything they could to abuse, ignore or violate the 10th Amendment.
But it sure is nice having our elected officials join us in that conversation.
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