Texas Gov. Rick Perry standing at a podium in front of a giant image of a flag with his hands in prayer pose.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry needs to be praying people don't notice what his "Texas miracle" actually looks like.
 
As a presidential candidate, Texas Gov. Rick Perry liked to talk about the "Texas miracle"—that, coming out of recession, the state created jobs when other states weren't—and credit Republican policies for it. The miracle was always more of a mirage created by population growth, government jobs, and minimum wage jobs, and masked a whole lot of other bad statistics. Like this, your Texas miracle in action:
There was a 47 percent increase in the rate [sic; actually number] of Texas children living in poverty from 2000 to 2011, according to the Kids Count report by the Center for Public Policy Priorities, a liberal think tank that advocates for low-income Texans. That was faster than the 18 percent growth rate in the child population in Texas during the same period.
Twenty-seven percent of Texas children were living in poverty in 2011, a rate that put the Lone Star State among the nine worst states.
Nearly 30 percent of Texas kids received Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, according to the report. Texas also has the highest rate of people without health insurance in the country, among other statistics showing just how bad Texas Republican governance is for Texans. And this is what Republicans want to export to the rest of the country.