Big Government fails in California, free markets thrive in Texas

The American Big Government Experiment has failed, as the Soviet one did previously. A cautionary tale for Massachusetts, if we are not too far gone already to heed it.

Calif., not Texas, made own mess

By Michael Barone
Tuesday, March 9, 2010

“Stop messing with Texas!” That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas’ anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democrats as well as to Republicans.

His point was that the big government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters’ ability to make their own decisions.

No one would include Perry on a list of serious presidential candidates, including himself. But in his 10 years as governor, the longest in the state’s history, Texas has been teaching lessons that the rest of the nation should heed.

They are lessons that are particularly vivid when you contrast Texas, the nation’s second most populous state, with the most populous, California. Both were once Mexican territory. Both have grown prodigiously over the past half-century. Both have populations that today are about one-third Hispanic.

But they differ vividly in public policy and in their economic progress - or lack of it. California has gone in for big government. Democrats hold large margins in the legislature.

Those Democratic majorities have done the bidding of public employee unions to the point that state government faces huge deficits. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s attempt to reduce the power of the Democratic-union combine was defeated in 2005 when public employee unions poured $100 million - all originally extracted from taxpayers - into TV ads.

Californians have responded by leaving the state. For the first time ever, it appears that California will gain no House seats or electoral votes from reapportionment.

Texas is a different story. Texas has low taxes - and no state income taxes - and a much smaller government. Its legislature meets for only 90 days every two years, compared to California’s year-round legislature. Its fiscal condition is sound. Public employee unions are weak or nonexistent.

But Texas seems to be delivering superior services. Its teachers are paid less than California’s. But its test scores - and with a demographically similar school population - are higher. California’s once fabled freeways are crumbling and crowded. Texas has built gleaming new highways.

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