At least better than you'd think listening to Gov Perry's anti-government rhetoric. When he announced his candidacy for president the other day, he growled that his goal as president would be to make Washington "as inconsequential in your lives as I can."
Except when it comes to job creation. Over the last few years, government jobs have been awfully consequential in Texas: 47% of all government jobs added in the US between 2007 and 2010 were added in Texas.
The chart shows that Texas employment wasn't down much at all in these years, as the state lost only 53,000 jobs. But looming behind that number are large losses in the private sector (down 178,000) and large gains (up 125,000) in government jobs.
Now, this was a period when the nation lost close to eight million jobs, so this churning in Texas is a very small drop in that bucket. But it sure doesn't match the Governor's anti-government rhetoric.
In fact, as the table below shows, the nation as a whole added 264,000 government jobs, 2007-10, meaning public-sector jobs added in Texas account for almost half of the nation's public-sector jobs over these years.
How did that happen? Well, Gov Perry has a funny way of going about that "inconsequential" thing. According to many news accounts from back in the Recovery Act days:
Turns out Texas was the state that depended the most on those very stimulus funds to plug nearly 97% of its shortfall for fiscal 2010, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Now, I've got no problem with a state government using Recovery Act funds to retain or create jobs. In fact, the figure and quote above shows Texas to be following a traditional Keynesian game plan: as the private sector contracts, turn to the public sector to temporarily make up part of the difference.
So, no disrespect Governor, but when you're getting your Keynes on like that, no need to hide it behind all that anti-government rhetoric.
This post originally appeared at Jared Bernstein's On The Economy blog.
Half of all federal jobs went to Texas in 2007-2010.
Perry and Private industry lost more jobs than the federal government added.
Perry needs to come clean about where the jobs came from, and where they went to, right now.
They also now that Obama extended the bush tax cuts which are half of our debt going forwards, complain about the deficits under Obama(down from the over ten trillion Bush handed him after Bush was handed 5 trillion in surpluses and turned that into 6 trillion in additional debt, an 11 trillion swing...
Now I have no problem with Perry and other repugs taking the stimulus. I have a problem when they say it didnt help and didnt create jobs, which is however completely against all the facts, while they asked for more.
They say that government does not create jobs.. and then the facts they tout about job creation show that the jobs they created were mostly government jobs.
Voters s/b angered about such lying that makes them look like fools. They s/b insulted to the point politicians would not dare do so.
Regards
Now what he spent money on was a phoney Defense build up(low Multiplier, no capital assets created that become self funding like inrastructure or a factory that exports) and no go weapon system as I was in the defense industry and it was joke.. instead of infrastructure and MFG.. which he began the outsourcing of, leaving us naked in a global economy and with ever grwoing trade deficits.
Regards
"Texas Legislature appropriated $14.4 billion of the stimulus money for fiscal 2009, 2010 and 2011. Five state agencies account for 93% of those appropriations: Texas Education Agency, Health and Human Services Commission, Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, and the Texas Workforce Commission.
The federal government is also sending money directly to local governments and other institutions, such a military bases, in Texas."
And here is the breakdown of appropriations.
http://www.window.state.tx.us/recovery/transparency/appropriated.php
Regards
For example many of the public works projects under FDR to create jobs are still here from roads, parks, Dams, colleges, The orange Bowl, and government buildings, but little of the WW2 weapons are still in use.
Military spending is an insurance policy, produces no capitals assets that generate a profit and have a payback... Cut the funding of the military or a defense contractor at its OVER, instantly.
And lot of our military spending flows out of the country to 900 foreign bases... which is a loss out of our wealth buckets, just like trade deficits.. and the major cause of our problem is thus trade deficits and defense spending, while spending 1/3 as much on infrastructure as other countries but 20 times more on military.
Regards
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LFRDvkNz0U&feature=youtu.be
Hopefully the country will learn a lot more about perry's record before he gets the r nomination. If they do, he'll scurry back to Texas.
Perry - the scariest politician to run for the highest office.
I awoke from a nightmare this morning wondering why the low-income right wing continue to vote against their own interests to the nations detriment. The educational system in Texas appears to be very, very lacking.
Why not?