Gov. Perry fires back at critics over his recession remark

AUSTIN – Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday fired back at opponents who seized on his remarks at a Houston business luncheon last week to suggest that he is aloof to the hardships Texans are facing in the recession.

Dave Montgomery | Ft. Worth Star-Telegram | September 22, 2009

“Taking a five-minute segment, a snippet of a speech and trying to twist that around is, I would suggest to you, a political hack at work,” Perry told reporters, responding to questions about a dust-up in political blogs last week after the Houston speech on Thursday.

In an excerpt from a video of the event, the Republican governor asked, “Why is Texas kind of recession-proof,” and referred to a report that Texas would be the first state coming out of the recession.

“I said, ‘We’re in one?’” Perry added.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, Perry’s leading challenger in the Republican gubernatorial primary, called the remarks “breathtakingly out of touch.”

Whitehouse rancher Hank Gilbert, a Democrat who formally launched his entry in the governor’s race this week, called on Perry to apologize to jobless Texans.

But Perry invited reporters to “look at the whole picture” and said he has continually stressed the “seriousness of this recession and how it’s impacted people.” He said he has been “very, very clear” in his concern for jobless Texans.

“I have said that till every Texan who wants a job has a job, we’re going to continue to create ways to improve our economy,” he said.

Perry didn’t identify the “political hacks” but pointedly observed: “You know what? I can take anybody’s little five-second blurb, whether it’s the president of the United States, or whether it’s a United States senator, or whether it’s a governor of the state, and make it be something that it’s not.”