Solid 'B' from Cato, High ranks from Club for Growth

Excerpted, ?"Front-runner for a reason" columnist Deroy Murdock, BostonHerald.com:

His record should satisfy limited-government conservatives far more than Romney’s...

The libertarian Cato Institute’s Report Card on America’s Governors gives Perry straight Bs and Romney consistent Cs.

Cato praised Perry for introducing “a zero-based budget to force the state agencies to justify their continued existence and funding levels” and noted that he has presided over moderate increases in the Texas budget. Cato applauded Perry’s “substantial achievement:” a $6 billion property tax cut in 2004. However, Cato criticized Perry for partially offsetting this tax relief with a cigarette tax hike and a gross receipts tax on business.

Cato observed that Romney’s “first budget, presented under the cloud of a $2 billion deficit, balanced the budget with some spending cuts, but a $500 million increase in various fees was the largest component of the budget fix.” Cato also saw that Romney “proposed modest increases to the budget and line-item vetoed millions of dollars each year, only to have most of those vetoes overridden.”

On health care, the free-market Club for Growth lauds Perry for expanding managed care within Medicaid. After Perry’s lawsuit reforms, “the number of insurance companies offering medical malpractice insurance soared 650 percent.”

Editor's note - Deroy is a syndicated columnist who writes for National Review and a friend of this website.