To the editor:
With all due respect to Mr. Herbert J. Grover’s recent opinion titled, “Cruz, Rubio cut from same cloth as Batista,” Senators Cruz and Rubio are the very embodiment of the American dream. Born of immigrant parents and modest economic means, both have excelled in their careers and are torch bearers of traditional American values such as self-determination, hard work, economic freedom and minimal government intrusion. Moreover, Cruz and Rubio should be judged on their own merits not on our assessment of their parents’ actions.
Not surprisingly, Senators Cruz and Rubio represent two of our most prosperous states: Texas and Florida. Both states are beacons of economic light in a nation still struggling to climb out of the darkness of a deep recession. As Mr. Grover notes, it is true that Texas passed on accepting hundreds of millions of federal Medicaid dollars. The reality is the state doesn’t need such funding; it runs an annual surplus, expected to reach $8.7 billion dollars by the end of 2014. Unlike several other states that took the federal bait, Texas will not face significantly higher Medicaid funding in the years ahead when the federal subsidies abate. It should be noted that Cruz is a U.S. senator, not a Texas state senator. Decisions of whether or not to take federal aid are made by the governor’s office in concert with the state Legislature. Mr. Cruz is a member of neither.
In several recent years, Texas created nearly as many jobs as the other 49 states combined. Its four major metropolitan areas (Houston, Dallas/Fort Worth, San Antonio and Austin) are all in the top 10 in population growth, and even amid this mass migration into the state, Texas sports an unemployment rate significantly below the national average. Simply stated, Texas is largely self-sufficient. As a bastion of economic freedom (the kind of freedom endorsed and promoted by people like Cruz and Rubio), it does not need the heavy hand of federal bailouts and subsidies.
As a former Wisconsinite, and, for the last 30 years, proud Texan, I firmly believe the nation would be well-served to embrace the values exemplified by these two young senators: the same values that gave us over two hundred years of American exceptionalism and greatness. Rubio and Cruz and a handful of other young conservative senators and representatives, such as your Paul Ryan, for example, give us hope for the continuance of a great America in the years ahead.
Steve Broder,
Terrell, Texas
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