They always say everything

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They always say everything is bigger in Texas, but this is too much even for the Lone Star State.

Reckoning that two U.S. senators and 32 congressmen were insufficient representation in Washington (not to mention that fella in the White House), Texas created an independent state agency to advance the state’s interest in Washington, the only state with such an arrangement.

But that wasn’t enough, not for Texas.

Even though the Office of State-Federal Relations has its own staff and an office in Washington, it decided to hire outside lobbyists to represent the agency, signing Drew Maloney, Tom Delay’s former chief of staff, and Todd Boulanger, a former member of Team Abramoff, to contracts together worth more $1 million. Some of that money made it back into GOP campaign coffers, but that’s a whole other story.

The next step would be for Maloney and Boulanger to hire their own lobbyists–because, really, with things like they are in Washington these days, how can the good people of Texas compete for federal dollars without their elected representatives’ agency’s lobbyists’ lobbyists?

Showing some of the common sense Texas prides itself on, a state advisory commission has now recommended that the Office of State-Federal Relations be abolished. Republicans in the Texas Legislature oppose the idea.

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