AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry said today’s stock market plunge shows that a financial industry bailout bill may not help the economy.

“Honestly, it didn’t surprise me that their miracle cure doesn’t appear to have worked,” said Mr. Perry, who has opposed the bailout legislation.

A day after European governments took steps to rescue major banks, the Dow Jones industrial average fell below 10,000 for the first time since 2004.

But as he huddled with state agency financial leaders and pension fund managers to discuss the national economy, Mr. Perry said the Texas economy remains strong.

Across the state, 252,000 additional jobs were created between August 2007 and August of this year, he said.

“If you gave every governor truth serum across the country, they would dearly love to have the Texas economy,” Mr. Perry said.

Without referring to California by name, the Republican governor contrasted Texas with the nation’s most populous state.

On Friday, fellow Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said his state could run out of cash to run basic services if it can’t borrow $7 billion from credit markets or the federal government to fill a funding gap.

Mr. Perry said, “We’re not going to Washington asking them for any monies to keep our lights on.”

However, he called for vigilance.

“We’re not an island,” Mr. Perry said. “As strong as our economy is, it’s still interlaced with the economies of other states that are in substantially worse condition than we are.”

Late Wednesday, as the Senate prepared to vote on a bipartisan $700 billion bailout package supported by the Bush administration, Mr. Perry announced he opposes the bill because “government should not be in the business of using taxpayer dollars to bail out corporate America.”

Today, he continued to bash the bailout bill.

While Mr. Perry praised a provision that will allow Texans to keep deducting state sales tax on their federal income taxes, he ridiculed provisions the Senate added to gain votes for the package, such as “$470 million for job creation in Hollywood” and “tax breaks for wooden arrows in Oregon.”