Rick Perry

 If it the age old saying is true, that “everything is bigger in Texas”, then so too is Texas’ governor Rick Perry and his controversial political decisions that have thrust him into the national spotlight, for better or worse.

           

In particular, Rick Perry’s attempts to distance himself from what he (and many other small government proponents) considers an overgrown central government in Washington have produced for him two moments of controversy. For perspective, let’s start with the second controversial incident, a gaffe occurring in April of 2009 when Governor Perry, at an anti-tax tea party rally at Austin City Hall declared "We've got a great union. There's absolutely no reason to dissolve it. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that.” (Huffington Post Politics, April 15^th, 2009) with the insulation being that Texas could, in fact, secede from the Union. Strangely enough, the aforementioned gaffe came immediately after Perry declared plans to reject nearly 600 billion dollars in stimulus funding from the federal government (Dallas Business Journal, March, 2009), claiming “accepting the funds would lead to additional taxing of Texas employers at a time when job creation is a top priority”.

           

 Fast forward to 2011: Texas is currently facing a 27 billion dollar budget shortfall, a problem Perry intends on “fixing” at the expense of higher education, (The Economist, March 23, 2011) never mind that this problem could have been remedied by the same federal funding Perry rejected. In addition, Texas’ unemployment rate, once faring much better than the national rate, has nearly caught up to the nation’s 9.1 percent. (The Economist, March 23^rd, 2011) Ironically, the same stimulus funding rejected by Governor Perry was specifically designated to assist the state’s unemployment benefits.

The two controversial moves by Governor Perry seem to be calculated if not related in motif as well. These political gestures will come under more intense scrutiny as Perry moves closer to a presidential bid in 2012. But as long as he’s governor of Texas, if Perry continues to make bold moves at the expense of the state’s economic vitality, whatever his motifs may be, he may as well do the rest of the nation a favor and make good on his threats of secession.