An interesting twist - turns out that Governor Rick Perry awarded a $1.8 million grant to CGI Group, the Montreal-based company that has been in charge of the website rollout of the Affordable Care Act. Our friends at Texans for Public Justice got the scoop:

A year after Obamacare’s birth, a fierce critic of the program inadvertently helped sabotage it by awarding $1.8 million in Texas taxpayer funds to subsidize Montreal-based CGI Group. This technology firm incubated by Governor Perry was the lead contractor producing the bug-infested software that crippled Obamacare’s rollout.

 

When Governor Perry went to Belton in 2011 to announce a $1.7 million Texas Enterprise Fund grant to CGI he spoke blandly of yet another handout of corporate welfare. “This TEF investment in CGI will create 350 jobs and millions in capital investment,” a Perry press release quoted him saying.

 

By the time the next presidential primary rolls around, this rhetoric may get jazzed up considerably. After all, while national attention riveted on Canadian-born Ted Cruz, a Canadian firm quietly recruited and subsidized by Governor Perry derailed Obamacare to an extent that Cruz only dreamed of.

 

N'est-ce pas?

 

View a list of top Texas recipients of CGI campaign money at TPJ.ORG.