KERA Interview |
Bill White's endorsement by the Houston Chronicle is the first major newspaper endorsement of the general election.Houston Chronicle
Sept. 18, 2010
Texas faces an unprecedented budget deficit estimated at $21 billion, faltering health care and public education systems, and demands for new energy sources and transportation funding. For nearly a decade, Rick Perry — the longest-serving governor in Lone Star history — has been at the helm of an increasingly wayward ship.
Texas can't afford four more years of Perry's leadership.
The governor has shown a distaste for dealing with budget details, fobbing them off on the Legislature and even suggesting in a recent news conference that Comptroller Susan Combs had better uses of her time than issuing deficit projections.
Fortunately, voters have the opportunity to replace Republican Perry with former Houston Mayor Bill White, a Democrat with credentials as a successful lawyer, corporate CEO and public servant who demonstrated his management capabilities and hard-work ethic during a six-year tenure at City Hall.
As he did in Houston, White can bring innovative financial solutions, a passion for environmental protection, and a strong bipartisan and ethical commitment to a governor's office tarnished by charges of cronyism, partisanship and catering to contributors at the expense of constituents.
"Today our state is being run like a political machine to perpetuate Rick Perry in office," said White during his screening with the Chronicle editorial board. Gov. Perry has declined to meet with Texas newspaper editorial boards.
"People want a governor who can bring people together to get things done," White continued. "Leadership is not dividing the state into red teams and blue teams, playing people off against each other. Leadership is not having citizens and journalists have to pry information out of the government when it's funded by the taxpayers."
Read the full story at the Houston Chronicle
One of Rick Perry's campaign ads One of Bill White's campaign videos |
An $18 billion to $21 billion permanent structural deficit in our state budget created by the property tax swap that Gov. Perry and the Republican controlled legislature passed in '06. Texas' state debt has doubled under Perry.
Rick Perry's property tax increase is hurting our local schools
Almost 1 million Texans are unemployed, a state record. Texas' unemployment rate (8.4%) now has been at or above 8 percent for 13 straight months, the longest period since a 23-month run from February 1986 to December 1987, according to data from the Texas Workforce Commission.
The Texas poverty rate rose 11% last year. Now 4.3 million Texans live in poverty.
Dallas Morning News - 5,550 Texans continue to lose their health coverage each week. Texas leads the nation in percentage of residents without health insurance with only 49.5 percent of Texas residents covered by employer-sponsored insurance.
Health care premiums have increased 91.6% since Perry became Governor
A recent report showed that Gov. Perry's Texas Enterprise Fund is "not creating jobs as promised." The Texas Enterprise Fund spent $368 million of public funding and only 33% of the projects created the pledged jobs. And Texas companies like Dell, are spending more to create jobs in China at the expense of jobs in Texas or even the United States.
Houston Chronicle - Perry and his family headed to China - But funding raises concerns about the trade mission.
Texas Tribune - Texas college and university tuition skyrocketed by 63 percent while Perry has been Governor. Since 2003, when the Republican dominated State Legislature deregulated tuition by allowing individual boards of regents to set prices for each school, tuition and fees at four-year state schools has skyrocketed by an average of 63 percent, from $1,934 per semester to $3,150 according to the last state figures, from 2008.
Utility rates continue to rise, and some utility companies and Perry thinks that is just fine.
The student dropout rate in Texas is 30 percent and as high as 50 percent in some large urban districts.
Texas currently has the third-highest teen pregnancy rate in the United States and “the highest rate of repeat teen births.
The rate of student pregnancies has increased as much as 57 percent and rates of sexually transmitted diseases are rising in some urban school districts.
