Texas Is Just As Poor, Just As Uninsured (And Rick Perry Just As Dillusional) As In 2000

If nothing else, perhaps this will stop Rick Perry from telling us how proud he is of Texas—and himself:

Texas has some of the poorest counties in the nation and continues to have the highest rate of uninsured individuals. But it also has cities with some of the largest household incomes in the country, according to figures released Tuesday by the U.S. Census.

Wait just a minute here. The Governor’s re-election campaign website says something entirely different:

• Texas has gained over 630,000 new jobs in three years.
• More Texans are working today than ever before.
• Our job climate has been ranked #1 in the nation.
• Job creation tools like the Texas Enterprise Fund and the Emerging Technology Fund are bringing thousands of new jobs to our state and adding billions to our economy.

Really? If this were true, the same amount of people wouldn’t still be living in poverty and more people wouldn’t be uninsured. Because, after all, if the Texas Enterprise Fund was doing its job, jobs with benefits like health insurance would be coming to Texas, right?

And, the Governor’s website also touts this accomplishment concerning insurance:

Since then, Perry has worked with legislators to make sure the program works for those who are most needy, as well as the taxpayers who pay for it. Today, more children than ever before – over 2.2 million – receive state-funded health coverage through CHIP or Medicaid.

Really? Then, why is this the case:

But Murdock said income, poverty and health insurance coverage information released Tuesday by the Census in two reports—the 2005 American Community Survey and the Current Population Survey—did not yield many surprises about Texas.

“We’re pretty much where we were on these parameters in 2000,” he said. “As we’ve been for a number of years, we had the highest percentage in the country of uninsured” at 24.6 percent.

Texas was the fifth poorest state, eighth in poverty among the elderly, 49th on the percent of people with a high school diploma and the state’s median household income of $42,139 ranked 35th, Murdock said.

The fact is that Rick Perry has produced a six-year record of underachievement. If he were a leader, instead of a tool for Grover Norquist, James Leininger, Bob Perry, the religious right, and the right-wing of the Republican Party perhaps he would have shown a little leadership and brought Texas out of the depths of these rankings.

Having a population with 24.6 of its members uninsured is nothing to be “proud of Texas” about. Rick Perry should be hanging his head in shame, not twisting it toward the camera in his TV commercials telling us how he’s near-to-bursting with Texas pride.

Perry—and anyone who thinks six years of no upward mobility in terms of the number of underinsured Texans, Texans in poverty and Texans who don’t graduate high school is a record to be proud of—is dillusional.

Bookmark It