Yellow Dog Blog « Help Us Beat Another GOP Lapdog Main Perry Plan Shortchanges Texas Schools » January 27, 2004 Is Rick Perry selling out Texas Military families? Apparently no less than his fellow Republican Kay Bailey Hutchison thinks so. According to the Dallas Morning News , Perry is standing behind the Don Rumsfeld/George Bush plans for base closures and layoffs like the good little lackey he is despite the negative impacts they might have for Texas. Hutchison isnÂt staying quiet though: U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, a veteran of Texas base-closing battles, has also joined the fray. The senator, who may enter the race for governor in 2006, disagrees (with Perry) that the draft Pentagon criteria are acceptable. In a letter to Pentagon officials, Ms. Hutchison urged that the closure criteria include more focus on overseas installations and take more consideration of homeland security needs before deciding which U.S. bases to close. "The current draft criteria, very similar to that proposed in the previous (Base Realignment and Closure Commission) rounds, do not fully reflect the security issues our country faces in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001," she wrote. "We must develop new strategies to ensure the military does not close a base only to later realize its costly mistake." Sounds quite a bit different from Rick PerryÂs kiss up: Last week, armed with a release of the draft criteria for closure, Gov. Rick Perry sent a letter to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld advising that the state would accept the federal criteria, which haven't been finalized | |
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