Texas Cities Won the Recession and They’re Winning the Recovery, Too

Gov. Perry’s leadership and sound Conservative policies are the reason more than anything else.

Via The Atlantic:

Welcome to the third phase of the Great Recession. Phase One was the housing collapse, felt most heavily in those cities along the Sun Belt that rode the real estate wave in the 2000s.

Phase Two was the stimulus recovery. Cities with large government presences saw slow but steady growth when federal dollars flowed through state governments. As a result, state capitals and military centers saw the most dependable growth.

This is Phase Three: the post-stimulus recovery. For the last year, total government spending has become a drag on the national economy. State and local government employment has steadily lost jobs every month this year. As a result, cities that rode out the second phase — e.g. San Antonio, Augusta, Jackson, Little Rock, Richmond, and Virginia Beach — began to slide when Uncle Sam tightened his belt.

But in all three phases, there has been one constant: Texas cities have outperformed the national average. They entered the recession later, thanks to high energy prices and low housing inflation throughout the state. They rode out the second phase successfully, thanks to military bases in Houston El Paso and plenty of government support for San Antonio across its medical, education, and local government sectors. And they’ve (mostly) thrived in this third phase, thanks the bounce-back in oil and gas activity in Houston and a strong high-tech performance out of Austin.

Last week, two reports again put Texas cities at the top of a national survey. Houston, Dallas, and McAllen were named among the 20 top-performing large U.S. metros, according to a survey out of the Brookings Institution that measures housing prices, employment and economic growth. Another report from the Milken Institute named San Antonio and El Paso the best performing cities in all of 2011. (Last year, Austin and McAllen finished in the top five.)

“Texas metros continued to dominate the rankings, taking four of the Top 5 positions and nine of the Top 25,” according to the Milken Institute report, which found Texas added one in every five new jobs in 2011.

One statistic to rule them all: By September this year, only six major cities had recovered all of the jobs they had lost in the Great Recession. Five of them — Austin, El Paso, Houston, McAllen, and San Antonio — are in Texas.

Now compare Texas’ economy to those states that have been ruined by decades of Democrat leadership — Michigan and Illinois, I’m especially looking at you.

Just one more reason that we need a proven leader like Gov. Rick Perry in the White House.