RUTHFULLY YOURS

Though our president has labeled Americans as soft, I believe our people have toughed it out the best they can. But they are looking for leadership and optimism, which are all too rare in Washington today.

What I am proposing today is the first part of an economic growth package that will rebuild the engine of American prosperity.

The plan I present this morning, Energizing American Jobs and Security, will kick-start economic growth and create 1.2 million jobs.

It can be implemented quicker and free of Washington gridlock because it doesn’t require congressional action. Through a series of executive orders, and other executive actions, we will begin the process of creating jobs soon after the inauguration of a new president.

There is, of course, an important role for Congress to play. And in a matter of days I will offer to the American people a broader package of economic reforms that I will take to Congress when I am elected President. My complete economic growth package will tackle tax reform, entitlement reform and real spending reductions in order to address our growing debt crisis.

But today I offer a plan that will create more than a million good, American jobs across every sector of the economy and enhance our national security, and the best news is it can be set in motion in my first 100 days.

My plan is based on this simple premise: Make what Americans buy, buy what Americans make, and sell it to the world.

We are standing atop the next American economic boom…energy.

The quickest way to give our economy a shot in the arm is to deploy American ingenuity to tap American energy. But we can only do that if environmental bureaucrats are told to stand down.

My plan will break the grip of dependence we have today on foreign oil from hostile nations like Venezuela and unstable nations in the Middle East to grow jobs and our economy at home.

America has proven but untapped supplies of natural gas, oil and coal. America is the Saudi Arabia of coal with 25 percent of the world’s supply. Our country contains up to 134 billion barrels of oil and nearly 1.2 quadrillion cubic feet of natural gas.

We have the resources we need to fuel our cars, our homes and our power plants. They can be found in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, Texas, Oklahoma, North Dakota, New Mexico, Alabama, Kentucky throughout the American West and, of course, Alaska.

But President Obama and his over-reaching Environmental Protection Agency won’t allow American businesses and American labor to draw on even a fraction of this domestic energy from reserves on government-owned lands.

Perry’s plan calls for using the power of the executive to rein in the EPA, while also opening up more land to energy exploration and use. This plan is smart, hitting our economic problems from more than one angle at once, and in a way that can be implemented quickly. The Achilles heel of the Cain 9-9-9 plan is that it requires Congress to approve it. No matter how good that plan is, Congress will monkey with it. Congress will mutilate it. 9-9-9 will soon become 10-10-10, or  15-12-18 or worse. Or, after Congress messes with it, it will end up getting vetoed. The chances of such a plan surviving contact with Congress intact are remote.

Perry’s energy plan doesn’t depend on Congress. It depends on having a president with the vision to take ahold of the bureaucracy that the voters have entrusted to him, and turn it away from the Obama job-killing agenda it has been working under. As governor, Perry has been taking that particular fight directly to Obama for more than two years now.

With a series of executive orders and other executive actions, I will authorize the following:

I will work to open up Alaska’s abundant resources to oil and gas exploration, including the ANWR Coastal Plain and the National Petroleum Reserve of Alaska. In this one instance, we will need congressional authorization. But it is worth it when you consider we will create 120,000 jobs.

We will initiate off-shore exploration in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas off the northern and western coasts of Alaska. This will create 55,000 jobs.

We will resume pre-Obama levels of exploration in the Gulf of Mexico and create another 230,000 jobs.

I will support the construction of the Keystone XL pipeline to take Canadian Crude to coastal refineries, which would create 20,000 direct jobs for American workers.

We will begin tapping the energy potential of the American West, opening up federal and private lands for exploration in states like Wyoming, Montana, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado and Utah. Collectively, our western states have the potential to produce 1.3 million barrels of oil per day by 2020 and contain 87 trillion cubic feet of natural gas.

They can produce more energy than what we import from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Venezuela and Russia combined!

Perry’s energy plan would also reduce power prices across the board, while putting Americans back to work in the energy sector. Lower fuel prices will curb the inflation that has been sneaking up on America’s family budgets. With more Americans working and with fuel prices getting back under control, the economy will be on a sounder footing to get moving again. And with greater energy independence, America is more secure.

Perry then turns to the EPA and the damage it is doing to the US economy and our position in the world:

While President Obama has been very public about his newest jobs proposal, behind the scenes the permanent bureaucracy is working to grind the economy to a halt in pursuit of activist regulations. A raft of new rules and foot-dragging by the EPA and Interior Department are killing job creation.

Examples include the Utility Maximum Available Control Technology rule, the Boiler MACT rule, the Cross State Air Pollution Rule, the proposed Coal Combustion Residuals regulation and Section 316 (b) of the Clean Water Act.

These new rules alone could destroy up to 2.4 million American jobs by 2020 and add $127 billion in costs to electric providers and consumers. Under my plan, each of these rules would be subject to an immediate review with a cost-benefit analysis to determine the impact on American employers and the environment.

If we face the facts, we know that none of these rules were needed to reduce emissions of the six principal pollutants by 50 percent since 1980. And they are not needed now, especially as our economy hangs in a fragile balance between recovery and recession.

I will take another step important to economic growth: I will stop the EPA’s draconian measures related to the regulation of greenhouse gases.

When you consider that any carbon reduction will be offset by the increase of carbon emissions by developing nations like China and India, the EPA would tie our economy in knots and advantage our global competitors while realizing no global environmental benefits in the process.

Download the Perry plan at the link above. I think it’s a serious plan that will help our ailing economy enormously.

While laying out his own plan, Perry is also taking a jab at Mitt Romney’s economic record as governor of Massachusetts. In a press release that is hitting inboxes this afternoon, Perry describes Romney’s jobs record as “anemic”:

AUSTIN – Despite his private sector experience, Gov. Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts ranked a low 47^th in job creation during his term.

While Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts’ population declined by 3,000 people, with only 45,800 jobs added during Romney’s four years in office – an anemic 1.4 percent job growth rate. At the same time, the U.S. as a whole experienced 5.3 percent job growth rate.

While Mitt Romney was governor, Massachusetts’ rate of job growth underperformed the nation’s rate of job growth by 3.9 percent.

Since Rick Perry has been governor, Texas, by comparison, has added 4.29 million people and 1.077 million jobs, an 11.3 percent job growth rate.  During Perry’s tenure, state job growth flourished despite two national recessions. At the same time, the U.S. as a whole experienced 1.1 percent job loss.

Since Rick Perry has been governor, Texas’ rate of job growth outperformed the nation’s rate of job growth by 12.4 percent.

“Gov. Romney was one of the worst job-creating governors in America and has no standing to attack Texas’ best-in-the-nation jobs record,” said Perry spokesman Ray Sullivan.  “Mr. Romney may have succeeded in taking over companies, dismantling jobs and profiting from corporate takeovers, but his gubernatorial record is marred by population loss and near-record low job growth.”

It seems to me that the campaign is, finally, well and truly on.