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The Choice for Texans

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“This very night I look forward to the day when this beloved country of ours— for, thank God! we have a country at last— will be a country to live for, to pray for, to fight for, and if necessary, to die for.” So said Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar of Mississippi, upon his state’s secession from the Federal Union in 1861.

The movement for Texas to secede and to, once again, become an independent nation is growing daily. Such talk a generation ago would have invited laughter and mocking. Polls would have shown a handful in favor of such a move, at best. Yet today, surveys show more and more Texans leaning toward separation. A February 2024 poll showed 31 percent in favor. Other states are experiencing similar movements, as the situation in Washington continues to deteriorate and the national fiber steadily crumbles. 

One of the most often used excuses for Texas remaining in the American Union is the amount of federal money given to the state each year. 

I’ve heard it said many times, whether on social media or discussing the matter with friends and colleagues: “Texas gets too much money from Washington,” or “There are big military expenditures that benefit Texas, so they’ll never leave.”

Such drivel always reminds me of a scene in the Hollywood epic, Braveheart. Speaking to Scottish nobles, Mel Gibson’s William Wallace chastises them for their greed and lack of vision for the future. 

“You’re so concerned with squabbling for scraps from Longshanks’s table that you’ve missed your God-given right to something better!” And that something better, he says later in the film: “A country of our own.”

But what about those scraps from Washington’s benevolent table? Sure, Texas gets a nice share every year, compliments of Washington’s extraordinary generosity with the people’s money, yet where do these short-sighted thinkers believe the money came from in the first place?

Each year, Texas sends more than $300 billion to Washington exclusively from the federal income tax, while getting back less than a third of the total. Billions more is transferred from the 18.4 cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax. 

Every year it leaves the pockets of Texans and is sent to Washington, to be used as part of their frivolous spending spree, to keep politicians in power and living large, which has now run the national debt to more than $35 trillion, more than $104,000 for every single Texan, and every single American. We now run annual deficits of more than $1 trillion. The deficit for 2023 hit $1.7 trillion.

Federal spending totaled over $18,500 per Texan in 2023, with nearly $5,000 of the total going to militarism, foreign wars that are not in the best interests of Texans or the American public as a whole. The greatest share went to federal entitlements, which is growing by leaps and bounds with no serious effort to even slow them down a tiny bit. 

The federal budget has now reached $6 trillion and, with annual increases on automatic pilot, is projected to be at $9 trillion in a few short years. But those numbers pale in comparison to unfunded liabilities for federal entitlements like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, over the next 30 years America’s unfunded mandates will reach $120 trillion! That is an obligation over and above what we will take in via taxes, which means that an additional $120 trillion must be found somewhere in order to pay those debts. It’s catastrophic on every level … and likely unobtainable without massive tax increases, steep cuts in benefits, or both. 

By contrast, Texas ran a $33 billion surplus last year, the largest in the country, and all without an income tax, with annual revenue at more than $300 billion.

Texas also sits on trillions of dollars’ worth of oil and natural gas, production which is controlled by Washington. Now, just imagine, if Texas could control its own resources and sell oil and natural gas on the world market. How much would flow into the treasury? Our own treasury, not Washington’s. And imagine, if all the billions that are annually sent to Washington remained in Texas, for Texas! 

There is vast wealth in Texas … and it should remain in Texas for Texans.

In 1861, Southerners had to ask themselves if being in the American Union was more beneficial than being out of it. Texans have before them the same question. 

After completing the Louisiana Purchase, President Thomas Jefferson hoped that the new states carved out of the vast, new territory would be happy in the American Union, but “events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interests in separation,” he wrote, why should the other states in the union oppose it? “Keep them in the union, if it be for their good,” Jefferson thought, but separate them, if it be better.”

Texans will soon have to choose which is better!

Ryan Walters
Ryan Waltershttps://ryanswalters.net/
Ryan S. Walters is an independent historian who currently resides and writes in North Texas. He is the author of The Last Jeffersonian: Grover Cleveland and the Path to Restoring the Republic, Remember Mississippi: How Chris McDaniel Exposed the GOP Establishment and Started a Revolution, Grover Cleveland: The Last Jeffersonian President, Apollo 1: The Tragedy That Put Us On the Moon, and The Jazz Age President: Defending Warren G. Harding. He has appeared on CSPAN, Breitbart Radio, the Dennis Prager Show, the Tom Woods Show, the Chris Stigall Show, the Mark Davis Show, the Michael Berry Show, the History Unplugged Podcast, and many others. He has written for Townhall.com, LewRockwell.com, AntiWar.com, Mises.org, Confederate Veteran magazine, Chronicles magazine, the Foundation for Economic Education, and the Abbeville Institute, and has spoken at a number of venues, including the Union League Club of New York City, the President Harding Society, History Camp, the Abbeville Institute Summer School, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

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