For Republican governors, all economic success is local

WASHINGTON —  Texas Gov. Greg Abbott often knocks President Biden for high inflation and a looming recession — a standard Republican argument going into the November elections.

But inflation in major Texas cities is even worse than in the nation as a whole. Government figures show it’s 10.2% in the Houston area and 9.4% around Dallas; the latest national average is 8.5%.

And as Abbott and other GOP leaders argue that the U.S. economy has slumped into a recession, Republican-led parts of the country are booming. Those officials blame Biden’s policies for high gas and food prices, but take credit for the job gains those policies helped spur.

Abbott tweeted July 28: “The U.S. economy is in a recession under Biden. Meanwhile, Texas was #1 in the nation for job growth in June & more Texans have jobs today than ever before in our state’s history.”

In 15 GOP-led states, the Associated Press found, governors have praised their job growth over Twitter or in public even as their senators were saying the national economy was crashing. These seemingly conflicting claims were also repeated in public remarks.

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GOP leaders say state policies such as low tax rates and keeping businesses open during the pandemic helped fuel hiring and investment. But their claims ignore how job growth was also boosted by a historic injection of federal money that began in March 2020 and continued under Biden with last year’s $1.9-trillion coronavirus relief package.

Biden and his fellow Democrats have acknowledged the pain caused by inflation, which hit a 40-year high this summer. But the president emphasizes that the nation has avoided a recession due to the low 3.5% unemployment rate. He argues that global factors such as the pandemic, fragile supply chains and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused prices to jump — and that he’s meeting the public’s needs with the economic and climate package he signed into law last week.

“Too often we hand the biggest microphone to the critics and the cynics who delight in declaring failure, while those committed to making real progress do the hard work of governing,” Biden said in a swipe at Republican leaders.

Multiple surveys do show that voters have a sense of foreboding about the economy and that most people fault the president. Researchers say there aren’t many academic analyses to explain why many blame inflation on White House policies and give a pass to statehouses, as inflation had been low in recent decades and less of a factor than jobs in elections.

Andrew Reeves, a political science professor at Washington University in St. Louis, said voters may be judging the local and national economies by different standards. With state and local officials, voters tend to form opinions based on what they observe in their daily lives. But they often gauge the national economy through hard numbers and political ideologies.

“The ‘national economy’ is this nebulous thing that none of us actually experiences,” Reeves said. “It’s an abstract concept. We may be more willing to let our partisanship shade how we see what is going on nationally. Joe Biden is well into his term, so the honeymoon is over and he owns this economy — whether his policies are directly responsible for it or not.”

GOP governors such as Florida’s Ron DeSantis and Georgia’s Brian Kemp have been largely unscathed by inflation, though consumer prices are significantly above the national average in their states. Inflation is 10.6% in the Miami area, 11.2% in Tampa and 11.5% in Atlanta.

Many voters in Republican states are hearing an economic argument similar to what Biden has made on a national scale — that job growth and government finances are strong enough to insulate people from a downturn.

DeSantis dismissed Biden’s claims that the U.S. economy remains healthy, calling that “Orwellian doublespeak.” The governor said at a conference on Aug. 1 that his state’s budget surplus could insulate it from a downturn.

“We’re not immune to the inflation; we’re not immune to the energy prices,” he said. “Because Florida has been open, because Florida has excelled economically, we’re in the position where we’re going to be able to meet those needs of the state regardless of what Uncle Joe throws at us from Washington.”

Job growth has been broad across the country. Data released Friday by the Bureau of Statistics showed employment increased in 43 states over the last 12 months and was essentially unchanged in the remaining seven.

But the bipartisan research group EIG analyzed job growth in the three major GOP states (Texas, Arizona and Florida) and the three major Democratic ones (California, Illinois and New York). It found the GOP areas had fully recovered and exceeded their pandemic job totals, while the recovery has been slower in Democratic states.

What seems to be the overarching priority among voters is not jobs but inflation, said John Lettieri, EIG’s president and chief executive. He’s struck by how fears about prices are crossing generational, class, regional and partisan lines at a time of political polarization.

“There is strong unanimity that the economy is an issue, inflation is the No. 1 problem and Biden is to blame,” Lettieri said. “This cuts across all the divides.... They’re all responding to this to one degree or another in strong ways.”

Inflation appears to be an inescapable challenge for Biden, even as issues such as abortion rights appear to be rallying Democratic voters. Republicans can promote job gains to say why they would be better at leading the economy, without having to list, as Biden has stressed in speeches, their own policies for reducing consumer prices.

Gabriel Lenz, a political science professor at UCLA, said the “best measure of what voters are personally experiencing” is a metric known as real disposable personal income, which is how much money people have after adjusting for taxes and inflation. Its changes over the last two years mirror those of Democratic political fortunes.

When Biden signed pandemic relief into law in March 2021, people’s real disposable income climbed 28.7% from the year before. The aid helped the economy recover, but some economists warned it could also be inflationary. Over the last year, as prices rose and much of the aid expired, real disposable income tumbled 3.5% as a result.

So, Lenz concluded: “It’s no surprise that people are gloomy.”