As the Texas Legislature is transfixed by toilets, it has lost sight of a major development: The Texas economy, the pride and joy of the 21st century, is no longer No. 1 in the country. In fact, it's no longer even close.

Depending on which index you want to measure, jobs, growth or productivity, Texas is ranked 26th, 10th, or 21st. Once the state with the lowest unemployment, Texas fell to 26th earlier this year. Growth has flattened out. Costs have risen. Other states are just as — or more — attractive for business and people alike.

The bloom is off the rose. Meanwhile, most of the state's political leadership hasn't batted an eye. It didn't seem possible to keep former Gov. Rick Perry from going a day without taking credit for the Texas Miracle. Now, Greg Abbott is laser-focused on having a national constitutional convention while Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has chosen the noblest of hills upon which to die: the one with the outhouse.

The situation would be amusing if it wasn't serious. Many of the basic underpinnings of the economy here remain solid, that's true. Texas once generated more private-sector job growth than anyplace but South Dakota and the District of Columbia. But that is yesterday's news. Today's is that Texas is becoming a less competitive place in which to do business and live as the rest of the national economy has not only picked up steam in the recent recovery, but then outpaced Texas altogether.

For example, Waco economist Ray Perryman has forecast strong productivity and job growth in the metropolitan areas led by Austin, followed by Dallas, Fort Worth, El Paso, Houston, McAllen and San Antonio. His forecast, tempered by the words "fairly positive" also notes that the outlook is less clear for smaller cities in the state and rural areas will continue to decline.

"In fact, I think the real 'Texas Miracle' is not what happened during the oil boom, but the fact that the state gained over 150,000 jobs in 2015 and about 200,000 in 2016," he said. "It is also a testament to the progress the state has made diversifying the economy over the past 30 years."

As the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas has put it: "Low energy prices hurt the Texas economy." And they will continue to do so even if they have bottomed out. Economists have, to be fair, the strangest way of phrasing things sometimes and the Dallas Fed is no exception. Its summation for economic growth in Texas in 2016? "Slightly strong." Otherwise known as fair.

There was a time not that long ago when the Texas economy was hailed as nothing short of God's own proof that conservative policies of low taxes and even less regulation composed the path to heaven, or at least growth. Of course, the boom was a little more complicated than that; real estate was still cheap and that had more to do with a prior real estate bust than anything. But that didn't stop right-wing shills from trotting out that line every time.

And where are they now? Texas didn't become wildly liberal with Abbott in office. Complicated new tax brackets and complex regulation didn't sprout out of the ground like spring wildflowers. No, economies are cyclical. The national economy got better. What had given Texas its unusually visible edge, oil, went bust, again, and so here we are, just piddling along. Normally, that would be okay, actually.

Yet growth is a demanding master. The more you have, the more you need. With an unemployment rate about the same as the national average, according to the Joint Economic Committee in Congress, this calls into question whether Texas will continue to draw large numbers of job seekers, who have been coming by the hundreds of thousands each year.

After all, there is just as much work elsewhere and more, relatively speaking, in Hawaii, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Oregon, South Carolina, Utah, and lots of places in between; 27 other states to be exact. Increasingly, it isn't clear (at least to me) that a lot of people can afford to come to Texas anymore, anyway. The cost of living here was cheap because the cost of real estate was lower than elsewhere.

That is increasingly less true as real estate becomes a victim of its own excess. The median price of homes currently listed in the U.S. is $234,900, according to Zillow, while the median U.S. rental price is $1,500. In Texas, the median price of listed homes is higher, $249,900. The median rental price is $1,425, nearly the same.

Apartment construction along US 380 photographed on Monday, March 6, 2017, in Aubrey, Texas. 2 1/2 miles of Highway 380 at the Frisco/Prosper border are being upgraded to a six-lane freeway with access roads. The $60 million project extends from the Collin-Denton county border to just east of Preston Road. Multi-level overpasses will eventually be built at the intersections with the Dallas North Tollway and Preston Road. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News) (Staff Photographer)

Median wages went up in Texas sharply from about 2002 to 2012, more than 9 percent, according to Governing Magazine

But not only did oil production fall off in recent years so did manufacturing. Most of the continued job growth has been in the service sector. Governing measured personal income, jobs and overall productivity last year and ranked Texas just 21

st

- behind Arkansas.

As a result, the big picture is this: Overall economic growth has declined in Texas to 4.8 percent in 2015, down from this decade's peak, in 2012, of 6.2 percent. By the third quarter of 2016, quarter-on-quarter growth in Texas was 4.3 percent, still stronger than the national average of 3.5 percent, but weaker than 11 other states, according to the latest figures available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Back in 2015, we were still No. 2, behind Oregon.

For regular people, slowing economic growth means stiffer competition for fewer jobs and, if population continues to rise, increasingly scarce housing. To boot, that growth is threatened by the very Trump administration that Texas helped put into office.

Imports account for nearly one in every five dollars in the Texas economy. The 20 percent border tax President Donald Trump has proposed would amount to about $50 billion every year, transferred to the federal government and subsidizing companies elsewhere. It would squeeze Texas ranchers and farmers the most because they export much of their product and exist on thin margins. It could also shock the oil and gas industry. Big Energy is also Big Refining, which is a major importer, and still one of the pillars of the Lone Star economy.

Meanwhile in Austin, it appears no one has heard of the economy. Instead, the legislature has devoted itself to tightening some of the country's most restrictive abortion laws, grappling with Patrick's bathroom bill and rubber-stamping Abbott's call for a constitutional convention to limit federal power - all while backing Abbott's call to extend federal power by denying state funding to so-called sanctuary cities. The legislature has even entertained the teaching of evolution vs. creationism. (Again.)

Broken equipment and empty book shelves in the library at Thomas A. Edison Middle Learning Center in Dallas on Oct. 15, 2015. (Rose Baca/The Dallas Morning News) (Staff Photographer)

On the budgetary front, lawmakers seem ready to cut spending on things like health care, including state mental health institutions, even as population increases, instead of tapping the $10 billion savings account known as the rainy day fund. But that would make sense for a legislature that doesn't fund the growth of schools, leading to another ranking.

A rich state by any measure, Texas ranks 43rd in public education, according to Governing. That is, we spend less on schools - on teachers, administrators, staff, books and crayons - than nearly every state in the United States. All in, that's about $7,500 each year per student vs. the $20,000 spent each year per student in New York. Could New York spend less or spend it better? I'd wager yes. Could Texas afford more? Absolutely.

To sustain a robust economy, our young people will need skills and education. That's the kind of investment smart people make when they can afford to do so. Texas did not make those investments during the boom years; we didn't invest in the home repairs when we were flush. And now, we're less flush and the cracks in the foundation are starting to show. And when new buyers come along, they will notice. They always do.

The next Fortune 100 company to consider relocating to Texas will take a long, hard look at education, both primary and university-level. That's just smart business. Why would you locate a major facility, let alone a headquarters, to a place where you may have to offer literacy classes on the workshop floor or more training for college graduates who didn't study math? The answer is you won't. Not if other states are just as attractive - even more - now, after the recovery.

The reality is that politicians, conservative or liberal, can't make or break an economy. Generally, politicians merely raise or lower confidence in an economy through their words and policies. Saying Perry was responsible for the Texas Miracle would be like giving him credit for every sunset.

Gov. Greg Abbott, right, talks with Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly, left, before a briefing on border security Wednesday Feb. 1, 2017 at the Texas Department of Public Safety regional headquarters in Weslaco, Texas. Secretary Kelly and Abbott toured the Texas border with Mexico in a helicopter following the briefing. (Nathan Lambrecht/The Monitor via AP) (The Monitor via AP)

Perry's successor, by comparison, seems downright shy about the economy. And now we know why: He loves having his picture taken on gunboats and helicopters on the Mexican border. He embraces rank hypocrisy by suing the federal government as attorney general and then piling on with the feds, as in so-called sanctuary cities, when it's expedient. Abbott's favorite though may be his fantasy of a constitutional convention that he convenes and after which he is whisked away to the White House.

But the nuts and bolts of the economy? Nah. His trip to Washington recently was downright strange: he went hat-in-hand to President Trump for jobs from a call center company that was already reportedly relocating to, among other sites, Texas. Getting private sector jobs because of public sector grandstanding seems, well, downright socialist, actually.

Yet the economy is the one thing that most Texans, regardless of class, education, politics and heritage, all agree on. When it comes to their priorities it is consistently No. 1. A poor Mexican migrant wants a $10-an-hour job like a banker wants a 7 percent rate. Both might still be had, certainly. But neither is as plentiful as it once was.

And we're not No. 1. We're number 26, 10, 21 or 43. Texans might want to remember that when Abbott and Patrick tell us what a success the legislature was. Because it wasn't. If it had a number it'd be this one: Zero.

Richard Parker is the author of Lone Star Nation: How Texas Will Transform America and the lecturer-of-practice in journalism at Texas State University. He lives in Austin and is a frequent columnist for The Dallas Morning News. Twitter: @richardparkertx