JOHN MERLINE: Just How Lousy Is The Economic Recovery? “Indeed, when you compare the current recovery to the recoveries from the two previous worst post-Depression recessions — the one in 1974-75 and the one in 1981-82 — the picture is decidedly bleak. . . . The evidence from past recoveries shows that things could be — and arguably should be — much better than they are now. Which strongly suggests that, however bad the recession was, something the federal government is doing today is putting a drag on the normal recovery trajectory. Only by admitting there’s a problem will we ever have a chance of getting the current recovery back on track.” If you make it harder to create jobs, fewer jobs will be created.

Related: More than half of the new jobs created in the past 12 months were in Texas. “What does Austin know that Washington doesn’t? At its simplest: Don’t overtax and -spend, keep regulations to a minimum, avoid letting unions and trial lawyers run riot, and display an enormous neon sign saying, ‘Open for Business.’ . . . At bottom, the struggle between national Republicans and Democrats is over whether the country will adopt a version of the Texas model, or of the Michigan, New York, or California model.”

UPDATE: Reader Chuck Allen writes:

One item that Rich Lowry forgot to metion about the “Texas Model” is the fact that the Texas legislature isn’t around to do a lot of spending or trouble-making. It “…meets once every two years for 140 days to produce a biennial budget.”

It is no surprise that it is the states with the full-time, left-leaning legislatures that are in such trouble. The representatives have nothing better to do than hang around and make our lives misserable, since as we know legislative success is not determined by the quality of bills, but by the quantity.

Yes, we could do worse than to make that the national approach.