It’s always great to see some prolific politicians or high-level public/private official slamming the federal government’s calculation of the unemployment rate. The latest person to criticize the official jobless rate is former Texas Republican Governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate Rick Perry.
Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Friday, Perry called the unemployment number “a sham” because “it leaves millions of American workers uncounted.”
Although the unemployment rate stands at 5.7 percent, many critics of the Obama administration’s calculations say it’s really in the high-teens, early 20s. Others allude to the labor force participation rate, which is at a 36-year low with 62.9 percent – the U-6 is also a good measurement. (See: Federal Reserve Vice-Chair admits unemployment rate higher than official figures).
“The answer is not to expand the welfare state, it’s to build the freedom state,” Perry said. “I know it can happen, because we did it in my home state. Our formula was simple. You control the taxes and the spending, you provide smart regulation, you develop an educated workforce, and you stop lawsuit abuse at the courthouse.”
Perry, who if he runs for president could have another “oops” moment, can, too, be lambasted for lying and manipulating the general public to purport the successes of his own administration and put forward his own neo-conservative agenda.
For instance, speaking with Glenn Beck this past summer, Perry claimed illegal aliens were responsible for 3,000 homicides, but Politifact digged a little bit deeper into this statement: “This claim is unsupported by the presentation he relied on, which indicates that since 2008 in Texas, more than 200,000 arrested immigrants — foreign nationals living here with or without legal permission — had among them accumulated 3,070 homicide charges (not convictions) in their lives. Put another way, for this declaration to hold water, one would have to assume illegal immigrants committed nearly half of the state’s homicides since 2008; we found no such data.”
Furthermore, Perry has joyously lauded the state of Texas for its great economy. However, the Lone Star State’s economic picture is far from rosy.
It still has one of the highest unemployment rates in the country (8.2 percent; or would it be higher?), it’s shedding private sector jobs and the size of the local and state governments have been on the rise. In addition, Perry received nearly $20 billion in federal stimulus money in 2011, despite supposedly detesting federal government intervention into state matters.
It should be interesting to see how he turns this around in the presidential election because the data is there. Perry is just another political opportunist who pretend to be a Tea Party conservative, when in fact he is just another big government crony.
This is the problem with conservatives. With liberals you’ll know what you’ll get – big government, more debt and higher taxes – but with conservatives they’ll tell you a limited government lie and then turn around and stab you in the back.
Oops.
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