Texas after 10 years of Gov. Goodhair and the Texas GOP.
Most readers here at Daily Kos know at least a bit of the horrors that await if Rick Perry gets in the White House. But as a public service announcement for your "less informed" friends and relatives, here is the perspective on Governor Goodhair from deep in the heart of Texas after 10 years in office.
As Rick Perry begins his run for the White House, he is leaving a state that is becoming poorer, less able to educate its citizens, and less able to care for their medical needs.
Bloomberg, Aug. 18:
Growth in health care, defense-related markets and energy industries helped to double the number of Texas households with annual incomes topping $150,000, to about 640,000 in 2009 from 2000, Census figures show. Yet the state’s inflation-adjusted median household income fell 5.4 percent, and more than 1.6 million households have incomes of less than $20,000.
Yes, I know Texas has a low cost of living. But I got news for you, folks: $20k is still poor as a church mouse, even in Texas. Continue on past the curlicue for some choice "accomplishments" in health and education.
From the Houston Chronicle Aug. 18, 2011:
As Gov. Rick Perry travels the country in his bid for the Republican nomination for president, his and Texas' record on health care issues - particularly in light of his criticism of the health care reform bill touted by President Barack Obama - will draw fresh scrutiny.
With 26 percent of its citizens lacking health insurance, Texas ranks the worst in the nation for health care coverage. Premiums are well above the national average. The number of Texans who qualify for Medicaid has grown 80 percent since 2001.
While Perry trumpets the state's balanced budget, he fails to mention that lawmakers this year cut $805 million from doctors serving Medicaid patients, and that they also postponed $4 billion in Medicaid costs for payment in the next budget cycle.
Ezra Klein, in the WaPo, Aug. 15, explains in more detail about this lovely little time Medicaid time bomb:
Perry’s budget only covers Medicaid funding through the spring of 2013, coming up $4.8 billion short. It effectively sends the 2013 state legislature an IOU, allowing lawmakers to avoid coming up with more money on top of the 12 percent reduction in Medicaid spending that’s already in the budget. Texas has the highest rate of uninsured residents in the country, with a quarter of state’s population reporting that they have no coverage.
You may have heard that Texas, like a lot of other states, had some problems getting a budget to balance. Well as Governor All-Hat-And-No-Cattle will proudly tell you, they got it to balance all right: right on the backs of our school children.
The Perry budget cuts $4 billion in basic spending on public education - the first per capita decrease in public education spending in Texas since World War II. Our schools are struggling to pay the bills while we continue to bump along in the bottom third of all U.S. states in terms of class sizes and graduation rates. And for the first time in more than 25 years, Texas will not factor in enrollment growth in school budgets. Perry's budget assumes our school population will remain constant through 2013!
From Bloomberg, Aug. 18, 2011:
With public schools projected to serve 80,000 more students this year than last and a tax system that wasn’t expected to support that demand, Perry cut $15 billion from spending and shortchanged them by about $4 billion from previously mandated levels rather than raise taxes. The governor spurned attempts to use the state’s reserve fund, projected to top $6 billion by August 2013, even as education advocates said his budget would lead to the loss of several thousand school jobs.
“Texas didn’t fully fund its public-education formula for the first time since 1949 because they were facing a major budget crisis,” [former Texas state comptroller Billy] Hamilton said.
The budget also cut higher-education support by $1.2 billion, a move faulted by critics including former AT&T Inc. (T) Chairman Ed Whitacre for threatening the quality of the state’s workforce.
...
“Texas will lose jobs today and worst of all will have a less-educated, less-skilled workforce to compete for quality jobs in the future” because of the budget that begins next month, [State Rep. David] Villarreal said in May when the Legislature passed the spending plan. He called it “a betrayal of Texas families, especially women and children.”
Finally, that much-vaunted "Texas miracle" on the jobs front is proving to be a chimera, composed primarily of oil patch jobs and - wait for it - a growth in state government jobs in the past 5 years under the Perry Administration that are now being cut. As a result, our unemployment rate here in Texas jumped this past month to 8.4% - a level not seen since we went through the depths of the oil/banking/real estate bust in the 1980s.
Politicians taking credit for job growth in Texas are full of hot air. As Terry Clower, director of the Center for Economic Development and Research at the University of North Texas at Denton says, "The jockey in the horse race is very important, but which horse he gets on also matters."
When Rick Perry saddles up and rides out of Austin, Texas will be left with more people living in poverty, a medical system that is inaccessible for almost half the population, closed schools and university facilities, and the most minimum wage jobs in the country. Most folks I know here in Texas would dearly love to get Rick Perry out of Austin, but not for a promotion to the city he claims to hate so much. Caveat suffragator! (Let the voter beware!)