In speeches and media appearances, Republican governors are savaging President Biden for policies they say are wrecking the U.S. economy as a whole. But in the particulars — in their own states, in other words — the economy’s booming.Somehow, in states as different as Maryland, Florida, Massachusetts and Arizona, Republican governors suggest they’ve found a magic formula for fostering booming growth and reducing unemployment back home.Take, for example, these remarks from several governors’ annual State of the State addresses this year:“Our national economy is struggling,” said Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma, before continuing: “As unemployment skyrocketed in some parts of the country, ours is down to just 2.3 percent.”“Job creation in Florida is far exceeding the national average,” Ron DeSantis of Florida said. “And our labor force has increased six times faster than the nation’s.”“Our unemployment rate is below 4 percent for the first time since March of 2020, and we’ve gained back over half a million jobs,” Charlie Baker of Massachusetts said.“Our economic recovery is one of the very best in America, our unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since before the pandemic and a national survey named Maryland as the most improved state for business in America,” Larry Hogan of Maryland said.It’s not so easy to separate out the performance of individual states from the nation’s, economists say — let alone attribute that performance to any particular move a governor makes. Nevada, for instance, was hit especially hard by the pandemic because of its heavy dependence on tourism.“Presidents have less to do with the economy than people think, and the same goes for governors,” said Michael Strain, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.States run by Republicans have seen their employment levels recover faster as they have emerged from the pandemic, observed Adam Kamins, a senior director of economic research at Moody’s Analytics. But he added that deeper structural issues — demographic patterns, the affordability of housing — have played a larger role in buoying growth in states like Idaho and Utah than any specific policies.“You do see stronger job growth in Republican-controlled states for sure,” Kamins said. “But correlation is not causation.”Among the fastest-recovering states, Kamins noted in one analysis, was North Carolina — the governor of which is a Democrat.Republicans see matters differently. Seventeen of the 20 states with the lowest unemployment rates as of January are run by Republicans, noted Jesse Hunt, spokesman for the Republican Governors Association.“That’s no coincidence,” Hunt said. “They enacted conservative policy solutions that allowed their states to recover faster from the pandemic than Democrat-led states.”Governors have certainly made trade-offs during the pandemic between the health of their populations and economic growth, said David Cooper, an economist at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Cooper noted that seven of the 10 states with the highest per capita deaths from Covid-19, including Oklahoma, had Republican governors.“Is that really a win?” Cooper asked.Others point out that infusions of federal money during the coronavirus pandemic, such as the CARES Act and the American Rescue Plan, have a lot more to do with bringing states back from economic disaster than anything individual governors have done.“Basically it’s insane to say, ‘Our policies are good. Theirs are bad. Our unemployment is really low and our inflation is really high compared to the rest of the country,’ where unemployment is merely low and inflation is merely high,” said Betsey Stevenson, who was a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers from 2013 to 2015.Several economists we spoke with said that luck played a major role in how badly a particular state was hit by the pandemic — a complex equation influenced by demographics, population density and industry mixes.One economist compared politicians’ claims about influencing the trajectory of the economy to “a rooster crowing at the dawn.”ImageIn Iowa, Gov. Kim Reynolds boasted about her state’s investments in broadband, housing and water quality — all of which came from President Biden’s American Rescue Plan.Credit...Kelsey Kremer/The Des Moines Register, via Associated Press‘Washington at its worst’
Republican governors have also been happy to promote specific investments made possible by the American Rescue Plan, Biden’s $1.9 trillion economic rescue package that passed last March, without noting the original source of the money.DeSantis, for instance, said the plan was “Washington at its worst.” But he later talked up his proposal for a $1 billion gasBy: Blake Hounshell and Leah Askarinam
Title: The Economy’s Terrible, G.O.P. Governors Say. Just Not in Their States.
Sourced From: www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/economy-inflation-republican-governor.html
Published Date: Wed, 16 Mar 2022 23:08:09 +0000
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