Hmmmmm.

Texas Lawmakers Consider Medicaid Withdrawal By EMILY RAMSHAW Some Republican lawmakers — still reveling in Tuesday’s statewide election sweep — are proposing an unprecedented solution to the state’s estimated $25 billion budget shortfall: dropping out of the federal Medicaid program.

Far-right conservatives are offering that possibility in impassioned news conferences. Moderate Republicans are studying it behind closed doors. And the party’s advisers on health care policy say it is being discussed more seriously than ever, though they admit it may be as much a huge in-your-face to Washington as anything else.

This on top of Friday's declaration by the Lone Star state's pumped-up governor:

Freshly reelected Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) just isn't ready to give up on the secession talk that made him a topic of conversation last year. Taking a national victory lap after his election to an unprecedented third term this week, Perry is out talking up his new plan to break up the union, kind of: It's time, he says, to let states opt out of Social Security.

John Cole asks the right questions to show how stupid this line of thinking is:

Could someone explain how this would work? How does a state secede from a program? What would the practical implication be? Could I pay into SS my whole life while a WV resident, then when I hit 65, I have a stroke and lose control of my senses and decide to move to Texas, and then I would not be able to collect SS? I’m honestly confused. What the hell is he talking about? Could a state secede from the Post Office? Or the Selective Service? Or the VA?

Ah, the smell of Texas Tea Talk early in the morning. If at once you don't secede, try, try again. Only this time, it's one crazy-ass brand of very selective secession, it appears. Somehow I doubt the state really wants to rid itself of say, the Border Patrol, or the right to be protected by the Defense Department, or all the federal dollars going into the Houston Space Center.