Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry had been noticeably quiet over the last few days about President Obama’s planned trip to Dallas to discuss his jobs initiative. Then on Tuesday, minutes after Obama landed in Texas, the Perry presidential campaign broke its silence by releasing a video called “Jobs 101” welcoming Obama to Perry’s home turf and promoting the governor’s four principles of job creation.
“Welcome to Texas President Obama” appears scrawled across footage of Air Force One landing on a tarmac. The text continues, “While you are here ... Here’s a lesson on jobs.”
The video cuts to “The Obama Way” of job creation and shows the president talking about how the stimulus legislation will get the country back on track. “Over the next two years, this plan will save or create 3.5 million jobs,” Obama says in the video.
It then cuts to a graph, presumably created by the Perry campaign, showing 1.7 million jobs lost between February 2009 and August 2011 in the United States. Next, Obama is shown addressing his jobs council in June, saying, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.” The words “Grade: F” flash across the screen.
Enter Perry, in footage that appears to be from his announcement speech in South Carolina in August when he first laid out his four-point jobs plan. “One is, don’t spend all of the money,” he says. “Two is keeping the taxes low and under control. Three is, you have your regulatory climate fair and predictable. Four is, reform the legal system so frivolous lawsuits don’t paralyze employers that are trying to create jobs.”
That plan, he tells the audience, led Texas to create 40 percent of the new jobs in the nation since June 2009. The video ends with, “Any questions, Mr. President?”
In a statement, Perry spokesman Mark Miner said, “Billions of dollars in spending is not the answer to turning around the nation’s economic troubles created by the president.”
With the race for the Republican nomination heating up, Obama was expected to put his newly partisan politicking on display during his trip to Dallas. According to prepared remarks distributed by the White House, he plans to criticize House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., for refusing to bring the jobs bill up for a vote.
“I’d like Mr. Cantor to come down here to Dallas and explain what in this jobs bill he doesn’t believe in,” Obama is expected to say. “Does he not believe in rebuilding America’s roads and bridges? Does he not believe in tax breaks for small businesses, or efforts to help veterans?”
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