'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
House Republicans are pushing back against President Obama's program to offer waivers to states on welfare work-requirement standards that critics say undermine a key piece of the 1996 welfare reform law.
Gov. Rick Perry said Monday that Texas won't establish an online marketplace for patients to shop for insurance or expand Medicaid, two key elements of the federal health care overhaul.
Rep. Silvestre Reyes, an El Paso Democrat who had scored a rare congressional endorsement from President Obama last month, was the only incumbent in either party to lose a primary race for federal office Tuesday in Texas.
The House Democratic Caucus has voted to reject President Obama's tax deal with Republicans in its current form.
With a well-funded, centrist Houston mayor running for governor at the top of the ballot, Texas Democrats were hopeful that the party would defy expectations in the 2010 midterm elections and knock off the nation's second-longest-serving governor in one of the nation's reddest states.
"I believe in the value of work," Rep. Lloyd Doggett, Texas Democrat and ranking member of the Human Resources subcommittee, said during the hearing. "All of us want to see fewer people receive assistance because they found a good job. But there is no indication that these folks that are not receiving assistance found a good job. And no one should consider it a success."
He said Perry's "refusal of billions of federal dollars is more of the same _ a narrow-minded policy, which denies our most economically disadvantaged neighbors access to a family doctor and denies many employers a more healthy workforce."
