Texas Secession Petition Receives Enough Signatures For White House Response

The state of Texas is apparently pretty miffed about President Barack Obama’s re-election.

Less than a week after Obama won another four years in the White House, an online petition calling for Texas to secede from the Union has gained enough signatures to warrant a response from the White House. The petition is posted on the “We the People” page of the White House website, a project launched by the Obama administration that requires a member of the administration to answer any petitions that receive more than 25,000 signatures within a 30-day period.

“The US continues to suffer economic difficulties stemming from the federal government's neglect to reform domestic and foreign spending. The citizens of the US suffer from blatant abuses of their rights such as the NDAA, the TSA, etc. Given that the state of Texas maintains a balanced budget and is the 15th largest economy in the world, it is practically feasible for Texas to withdraw from the union, and to do so would protect its citizens' standard of living and re-secure their rights and liberties in accordance with the original ideas and beliefs of our founding fathers which are no longer being reflected by the federal government,” reads the petition.

As of Tuesday morning, it has received more than 61,000 signatures from individuals across the nation. So far, the White House has not issued a response.

Although Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made tongue-in-cheek allusions to the Lone Star State’s secession in recent years, his press secretary, Catherine Frazier, said the former Republican presidential hopeful “believes in the greatness of our Union and nothing should be done to change it."

However, she also added that Perry “also shares the frustrations many Americans have with our federal government,” according to the Dallas Morning News.

During a 2009 Tea Party rally, CNN reported that Perry declined to rule out a possible Texas secession from the United States if significant changes were not made to its economic policies.

"When we came into the nation in 1845, we were a republic, we were a stand-alone nation," Perry reportedly said. "And one of the deals was, we can leave anytime we want. So we’re kind of thinking about that again."

Secession petitions have been filed for 25 states on the White House website, but so far the Texas appeal is the only one with enough signatures for a response.

Petitions have also been filed for Alabama, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina and Tennessee.