Some React to Perry's Stimulus Rejection

Augie Bering employs 175 people at his upscale hardware stores in Houston.

But don't think he hasn't felt the pinch of the tough economy.

"We're budgeting for less sales which means we are not hiring anyone at this point and time," the store owner says.

Bering says he doesn't quite understand president Obama's stimulus package, but he's been told it won't be good for him.

That's why he stood side by side with Gov. Rick Perry in Houston Thursday.

Perry announced he wouldn't accept a half billion dollars from the stimulus package that would've extended unemployment benefits to those without jobs and part time workers in Texas.

"The idea of what Washington is trying to do is force their philosophical idea on the people of the state of Texas," Perry says.

Perry joins a growing list of republican governors who say accepting federal dollars for unemployment benefits would require a law change and mean bad news for the state because the state would have to pick up the tab when the federal dollars run out.

But everyone is not supporting Perry's move; they're calling it political grand standing and partisan politics.

"If Texas does not get its share of that stimulus money, then Texas is going to be a fool and in the end it's going to hurt working families," R. Shaw with the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations says.