Congressman Flores Takes Softball Questions and Gives Talking Point Answers

Congressional District 17’s freshman Congressman Bill Flores spoke with Scott DeLucia on WTAW 1620AM last week. The softball question interview was full of Republican talking points and no real insights or solutions to current public policy problems. Flores said that Texas A&M is having a funding problem because “the state of Texas is having a funding problem is because we’ve got an economy in this country that is performing well below where it should be for this point in time in a typical recover.” Except that this is not a typical recovery because the recession was not a typical recession.

As analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, the loss of jobs during the Great Recession was far greater than the recessions during 1981-82, 1990-91, or during the 2001 recession. The long term unemployed are also much more numerous than in any of those recessions. Simply stated, the United States economy has just gone through the deepest economic recession since the Great Depression.

So, what is Flores’ solution? More deregulation. The same type of deregulation that lead to the financial collapse, that in tern lead to the recession. By getting government “out of the way of the private sector” Flores believes that “all of a sudden we’ve cured the problem.” Then of course Texas will gain more tax revenues, and it will not matter that legislatures in Austin created a systemic budget shortfall through excessive tax cuts and shifting tax burdens.

During the interview DeLucia also brought up that so-called earmarks are effectively band from certain legislation in the Senate, and that Congressional Republicans band earmarks in the House of Representatives. DeLucia noted that if a Congressman wanted to secure funds for his district he could simply call the particular authority over the funding they “return your phone calls.” Flores said that while they return their phone calls he is not sure how “deep the influence goes.” Apparently he is unaware of the extensive so-called letter marking campaign that his Republican colleagues have taken part in as a way around the earmark ban.

Flores also stated that debate about whether the cuts proposed to the federal budget by Congressional Republicans are $100 billion or closer to $50 billion that it is simply semantics. “I don’t care” because “neither number is high enough.” The Congressman focused on the Republican Pledge to America that proposed rolling federal spending back to 2008 levels, the same pledge that if implemented would mean $11.1 trillion in deficits over the next 10 years. Of course, Flores also supported the extension of the Bush era tax cuts that will cause nearly a trillion dollars in budget deficits of the next ten years. It seems as though that Flores is joining his Republican colleagues in being more focused on political victories and on providing real policy solutions.