If everyone is a drunk, but Ralph only gets blotto once a week while others are drunk most or all of the time, am I supposed to think that Ralph is a responsible drinker because others are drunk more often?
Alternatively, if I were to chose the least socialistic EU country, would that entitle me to claim that that country is fiscally “conservative”?
This applies to both your comments.
If you knew more about Texas you would stop waving the pom poms for Perry. BTW, do you know how our budget was balanced this year? With the same kind of smoke and mirrors accounting dodges that CA uses. We just haven’t done it as often as CA. You can contraqst that with Mitch Daniels’ fiscal record, which is better than Perry’s. (Nevertheless, I wouldn’t support Daniels if he were a candidate because I don’t think he can be trusted on “social” issues, which is one of Perry’s strengths)
Okay, let's do that. Mitch Daniels took office in 2005. In 2004, the last year before Daniels took office, Indiana had the 6th lowest per capita spending, and the 8th lowest spending to GDP ratio. That same year, Texas had the 4th lowest per capita spending and the 4th lowest spending to GDP ratio.
In 2010, Indiana had gone from the 6th lowest to the 10th lowest in per capita spending, and had gone from 8th lowest to 17th lowest in spending to GDP ratio. During the same time Texas remained at 4th lowest in both per capita spending and spending to GDP ratio. So while Texas spending remained fairly constant on a per capita and proportional basis, Indiana was spending a lot more per person and as a percentage of GDP.
Indiana also went from the 24th highest debt to GDP ratio to the 17th highest, and from the 26th highest to the 19th highest in per capita state debt during Daniel's administration. During that period, Texas went from 3rd lowest to 2nd lowest in both categories of debt.
So it appears that state debt and spending went up in Indiana under Daniels, while it went down or remained constant in Texas under Perry.