AUSTIN, TEXAS — After its Health and Human Services Commission informed Planned Parenthood — the low-cost or free health care clinic that services millions of women’s healthcare needs a year — that they would no longer be reimbursed out of the state’s Medicaid fund, Texas legislators have decided to further cut budget costs by blowing up every single dam, dike and levy in the Lone Star state.
Texas Republicans in the state legislature are reportedly drafting a bill that would de-fund all of their aquatic safeguards in their state. Not only would they remove all funding for dam upkeep from their budgets, they would also blow up the dams as a way to boost the state’s explosive manufacturing industry. “Just like we plan to cripple Planned Parenthood in our state to stop abortions, we plan to blow up the dams to stop flooding in our state,” Texas Republican Jim Malloy told the press.
“If we can help cripple an organization that actually reduces the number of abortions that are asked for in a state in an effort to reduce the number of abortions,” Governor Greg Abbott told reporters at a press conference this week, “then we can use the same rationale with flooding.” Abbott says that his state spends “a ton of money” every year maintaining the various dams and levees in his state, and that the upkeep on them “comes directly out of every Texan’s wallet,” which he says is “the criminal theft of government.”
Republican State Rep. Tom Thompaulsen told reporters at a recent press conference that “Texas Republicans are committed to shrinking the size of government in every way except when it comes to sexual morality” and that he and his fellow Republicans “will not rest until all the dams are gone and all the abortion clinics are closed” because to him, “you can’t fix a problem by doing something that helps reduce the risk of the problem happening in the first place.” In Thompaulsen’s view, “problems are only solved when you take away someone’s ability to do something proactively to prevent that crisis from occurring at all.”
Representatives from several state Republican legislators’ offices have said that dams won’t be the only taxpayer-funded, proactive, preventative measures that they plan to gut. “We’ll completely end house fires in Texas by removing all our fire hydrants,” one staffer told reporters on condition of anonymity and Chik-Fil-A. State Republicans are reportedly also looking to end traffic accidents by removing all stop lights and ending all police patrols of Texan streets to “end all crime everywhere.”
