Today, Barack Obama heads to Texas where he’ll be greeted by Governor Rick Perry. The President’s going to see just how awesome Texas is. Seriously. The rest of us should be jealous.Texas was just named the best place to do business by CEO Magazine, several other groups have listed Texas as the most favorable state for jobs, Raytheon just abandoned California for Texas. It’s got booming bioscience, technology, and manufacturing sectors. People who have been saying “it’s the oil” have to look again. It no longer is just the oil and gas.This morning I spoke to Governor Rick Perry. I asked him what he thinks the success of Texas is related to. He says low taxes, low regulation, an educated workforce, and a government willing to get out of the way all help Texas maintain its competitiveness. Likewise, he complimented Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal for trying to reform taxes in Louisiana. Governor Perry said that would force Texas to maintain its competitiveness and competition between the states works. President Obama is going to look at Manor New Tech High School, which is a STEM school in Texas. STEM stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The school is a public-private partnership with Samsung. Governor Perry helped create the school and was there for the ribbon cutting. It’s an innovative program that Texas has implemented quite successfully. The results speak for themselves.

• While the U.S. lost 2.1 million private sector jobs over the last five years, Texas created 494,000 private sector jobs.
• Over the last 10 years, Texas created 33 percent of the net new jobs nationwide.
• Texas has been the top exporting state in the nation for 11 straight years.
• Texas is ranked #1 on CNBC’s 2012 Top States for Business list.

In wrapping up our conversation, Governor Perry cautioned that the President may look at Texas and decide we need to take Texas’s approach nationwide. But Governor Perry said, “What works in Texas may not work in New York or other places. They might not want our approach and we probably wouldn’t want theirs. But it is the competition between the states that let’s us innovate and find out what works.”Texas has found out what works. But he’s right. Some states would not want that. Their loss is more and more Texas’s gain.