Why has the state’s public sector grown so much and held up so well? Don Baylor, a senior policy analyst for CPPP, said the biggest reason is rapid population growth, which has both spurred demand for public services and generated taxes to pay for them. (As the Journal story noted, more than half of the government jobs created over the past decade are in public schools.) In addition, the state, which escaped the worst of the housing bubble, didn’t start to feel the recession’s effects until fall of 2008—not long before federal stimulus kicked in. And though natural resources play a diminishing role in Texas’s economy, a boom in the oil and gas industries has helped support state and local budgets.
But Texas’s public sector won’t be insulated much longer. As many of the stories mentioned here report, Perry and the state legislature recently approved a new two-year budget that cuts state spending by 8 percent, with $5 billion in cuts from education alone. (Like the recent federal debt ceiling deal, it was an all-cuts, no-new-taxes package.) Time will tell what the impact on employment is, but CPPP projects the loss of more than 5,000 state jobs, with another 49,000 jobs in K-12 schools at risk unless local districts raise property taxes to make up for lost revenue.
For a number of reasons, it’s vital that the press tells this story—and that it keeps a close eye on Texas as these developments play out. On one level, it’s an accountability story: Does the tale Perry tells about his tenure check out? On another, it’s a chance to re-examine past debates: If the federal government had continued to support other state and local governments with extraordinary aid, what might the unemployment picture look like?
But most importantly, it’s a test of an economic strategy that Perry says he wants to bring to the White House. If Texas’s private sector proves strong enough to pick up the slack even as the state slashes public employment, it’ll be a point in his favor. If not, there will be more questions about the Texas miracle.
Dumb.
By your own accounting, Texas' jobs miracle is either 70% or 88% private sector jobs. Texas added teachers in the public sector (and that's about it) because its population is exploding. Texas government spending has tracked closely to population growth plus inflation.
Texas also added nearly 4 times more private sector jobs than all other job-adding states put together since June 2006 (78% of all new private sector jobs, to be exact). http://texanomics.blogspot.com/2011/08/texas-accounts-for-nearly-4-out-of.html
A booming private sector economy allows government to add those teaching jobs. Take out teaching jobs, and how many government jobs have been created in Texas? Far fewer.
#1 Posted by Texas Fact Checker, CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 12:50 PM
I dealt with texas:
http://www.cjr.org/campaign_desk/don_barlett.php#comment-47184
So did Krugman.
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/opinion/the-texas-unmiracle.html
Don't make me keep doing it.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 01:20 PM
I am glad to see CJR look into this. I know from my own experience that half of all the cold calls I get from headhunters are for positions in Texas.
@ Thimbles
Well, if former Enron advisor Paul Krugman said it .... by the way, how is he preparing for that UFO invasion?
#3 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 02:29 PM
I get it: Perry is a scarcely principled opportunist who probably will say anything to get elected. Bravo for going after another easy establishment target. But what else is new in the world of status quo politics? Is it really breaking ground to say Slick Rick Perry is engaging in disingenuous demagoguery? Was it toil to gather all those nationalist, leftist, FedGov sources and convert them to hyperlinks?
No offense, but the real elephant in the room is Ron Paul's uncanny ability to convert politically disparate voters to his "fringe" campaign, with his message and his unsurpassed, grassroots support base. The Obama–Romney status quo is threatened by the only solidly principled, free-market, anti-war candidate in the race — so much that the lib v con MSM blatantly shaft him. Where is CJR on that? Even the anti-Paul Roger Simon finally stood up and protested: politico.com/news/stories/0811/61412.html. So, CJR surely would find it newsworthy that Ron Paul earned a virtual tie with Michelle Bachmann and thoroughly dominated Perry, Pawlenty, Romney, and other establishment suits. No?
Maybe his close 2nd place in the Iowa straw poll simply means — as usual, duh! — that the poll means nothing. Or maybe he deserved to be snubbed by a "strong press"; maybe CJR joins all the other establishment dupes in casting Paul off to the "fringe" and "unelectable" bin. But even the historically hyper-statist, anti-Paul AP finally came around to the suggestion that such labels are old-hat and wrong: npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=139626210. Wow! So, shouldn't we at least give recognition to those precious, ethical few who temporarily break from the group-thinking MSM pack?
Of course, CJR may not need to post one word on this topic, so long as CJR allows me to continue agitating in its comments section. For which I am grateful.
#4 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 06:42 PM
Puh-leeze do not cite former Enron advisor Paul Krugman as any kind of an authoritative source. You may have gotten away with such specious citations in the past but WE DON"T BELIEVE YOU ANY MORE! You've hidden behind the brush-pile of our good manners long enough and we are calling BS on all of your left wing smear tactics!
#5 Posted by ConservaDad, CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 09:22 PM
Sorry to throw rotten eggs at those who are all in a dither over who won the straw poll this past weekend. How/Why: The "straw Poll" was won by nobody. The "winner" purchased SIX THOUSAND VOTES and gave them to folks. They run thirty bucks a pop, so basically the one who "bought the vote" and "winner" was, of course, Michelle Bachman (sp). Second biggest purchaser of bulk tickets....Ron Paul.
So basically all the ink and pixels wasted on who won is a total waste of "reporting" (or non-reporting as it appears only a microscopic number of reporters bothered to report how the FUND RAISER, which it is, actually works.
Money and organization (getting those with the free tickets to vote as you want them to do).
#6 Posted by Curtis L Walker, CJR on Wed 17 Aug 2011 at 09:49 PM
"Puh-leeze do not cite former Enron advisor Paul Krugman"
"Well, if former Enron advisor Paul Krugman said it"
Guys, you realize Rick Perry is from Texas, right? You might want to lay off the "connections to Enron discredit EVERYTHING YOU SAY" line of argument.
http://info.tpj.org/Lobby_Watch/enron.html
just sayin'.
#7 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 18 Aug 2011 at 01:48 AM
Just jumping in here to address Dan A.'s comment about Paul. There is little reason to believe Paul is a serious contender for the nomination, the straw poll results don't give us any more reason to take him seriously as a contender, and the AP story flagged above is too credulous on that score. Steve Kornacki, who's always worth reading, explains why here.
At the same time, I think there's a good argument to cover Paul, made here by Jason Linkins and Tyler Kingkade. Basically, it's that Paul offers a perspective that really is very different on important issues, and he's attracting support from a sizable and growing minority within the GOP. I made a similar argument a little while back about Herman Cain, who's also not a real contender. I don't think it makes sense to cover someone like Paul or Cain in the same way you'd cover Mitt Romney, but as long as they're attracting meaningful support (a standard I'm not sure applies to Cain anymore) I do think they should be covered.
#8 Posted by Greg Marx, CJR on Thu 18 Aug 2011 at 02:40 PM
Greg,
Thanks for addressing my protest.
Your hyperlinks are broken, but your argument makes sense thus: Ron Paul is unlikely to get the nomination because he is unlikely to get kingmaker-type media coverage.
It's a sort of paradox. You say Paul shouldn't get so much coverage as Romney et al., because he won't contend; yet, as is the case for any other candidate, his perceived ability to contend is largely contingent upon the quantity and nature of mega-media coverage. (An out-of-nowhere and allegedly radical Obama was in a similar boat four years ago until the MSM, Oprah, and droves of now-disenchanted progressives crowned him the next coming of FDR and the like.)
That being the case, your realist argument wins by way of self-fulfilling prophecy because, as Glenn Greenwald and others say, Ron Paul's message represents the greatest threat to the MIC-MSM-FED-GOP-DEM status quo. Perhaps the only threat.
In any case, here's hoping you and CJR will at least do some peer-reviewing of Ron Paul coverage as he continues to make the empty-suit authoritarians sweat.
Regards,
#9 Posted by Dan A., CJR on Thu 18 Aug 2011 at 07:29 PM
In other news:
http://m.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2011/08/chart-day-deleveraging-and-texas-miracle
"But how big a role did this play? Debt overhang is a big factor in our protracted economic downturn: when overleveraged consumers cut back on spending, this reduces demand for goods and services and gives businesses no reason to expand production. So economic growth stagnates and unemployment stays high. Today, Mike Konczal updates his look at deleveraging across the country, and the chart below quantifies this story of deleveraging and unemployment. Texas didn't have a housing boom thanks to its strict mortgage regulation, its debt overhang has therefore stayed low, and its unemployment rate, far from being exceptional, is right where you'd expect it to be...
But one thing that is exportable is tighter government regulation of the mortgage market. It works! Even though Texas is a fast-growing, warm-weather state, it avoided most of the housing madness. But that's the one thing you'll probably never hear from Rick Perry."
#10 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Thu 18 Aug 2011 at 11:25 PM
What a miracle it was. You can always expect GSM Texas to do these sorta things. Great work guys!
#11 Posted by Kelly, CJR on Mon 16 Jan 2012 at 01:45 PM