If you can’t tell the truth while everyone is watching, when can you??

Here’s the shocking story from Progress Texas…

Greg Abbott’s lie about why he’s defending $5.4 billion in Tea Party cuts for Texas school children is garnering scrutiny from Texas press, calling it “the most controversial exchange” of the entire debate.

We previously wrote about how Abbott was incorrect about the law he cited in the debate, and that he actually has the power to settle the school finance lawsuit. The key is that, contrary to what Abbott said, he can settle any case he wants so long as he notes that any agreement is contingent upon future approval by the Legislature.

Harvey Kronberg, of Quorum Report, took to TV to slam Abbott for his lie:

Kronberg: “I’ve been covering the Legislature for 25 years, and I can tell you that anytime somebody sues the government of the State of Texas successfully over a certain threshold, an Attorney General is empowered and has a great deal of discretion to settle, but over a certain dollar amount, it has to be approved by the Legislature. So he mischaracterized what the law does – it does allow him to settle, it’s simply contingent on legislative approval.”

To add even further issue with Abbott’s debate response, it turns out that he also lied about Wendy Davis voting for the law he referenced.  It was passed by the 2007 legislature, but Davis wasn’t elected until 2008 and therefore didn’t officially serve as Senator until 2009.

Now these are all issues based on Abbott’s actual response, but as written previously, the Republican candidate was careful to slither around Davis’ original question in the first place.  But in any case, this revelation is not going to look good for the “presumed” front-runner.  You can’t tell a lie with hundreds of thousands of people watching and expect it to go unnoticed.

Even if most voters haven’t tuned in to the Education saga, they don’t like it when politicians tell a proven lie.  If Democrats make an issue of this, it could hurt Greg Abbott and other Republicans in the final weeks to E-Day.