A handful of Republican governors are considering turning down some money from the federal stimulus package, a move opponents say puts conservative ideology ahead of the needs of constituents struggling with record foreclosures and soaring unemployment.Though none has outright rejected the money available for education, health care and infrastructure, the governors of Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alaska, South Carolina and Idaho have all questioned whether the $787 billion bill signed into law this week will even help the economy.
I don't see this happening. More likely, these guys are trying to save some face.
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They're definitely taking the dough:
http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/news/2009/02/sc_gov_says_hell_take_money_despite_misgivings.php
Do their constituents give them any credit at all for this sort of nonsense? "I don't like that stimulus bill. I'll give the money back--no, no, not really! Put the pitchforks down. But I will feel badly while I take the money."
The deep south, plus the lady who was unfairly "put on the spot" when the Republican head of the legislature asked her about her plans for Alaska in the coming year.
California was screwed by the Bush admin during its early years when an Enron energy swindle set its economy back. It was a state no Republican candidate for President with the exception of Ronald Reagan has ever fared well in. Screw you Gray Davis--we'll get a Republican in the statehouse who is a bit friendlier.
For several years now, during the weak kneed and flabby Schwarzenegger administration, Republicans in the legislature and senate have hamstrung the budget process, which requires a super majority, by refusing to ever consider a tax hike to pay for state expenditures--hmmn-education? California whose educational system was once the flower of the nation is somewhere near the bottom of percapita spending in the nation. Roads? Infrastructure? has there ever been a state so devoted to the automobile as California? How about prisons? Yeah, you got it, those law and order types between their 3rd strike laws and reefer madness drug policies have the largest prison system going in the US. Ok health and social services--well what are you going to do with a state which has since the Great Depression always been a nation's biggest magnet for poor, migrant, working people and like the rest of country also has an aging--meaning getting sicker, uninsured, and as unemployment rises uninsurable--population.
I live in California, where unemployment is outstripping the rest of the nation, where cities like Stockton and the area in southern California around San Bernadino could be poster areas for the mortgage meltdown--suburban ghosttowns. I am glad that no matter how much the Republican party in California wants to continue as the party of tax evasion here that this stimulus plan will do something to stop the bleeding, but I have to say if I were from another state, a state in which my legislators managed to be practical rather than endlessly ideological, in which I had a governor who was actually effective, I would not look on my federal tax dollars going to bail out Californians with much equanimity.
We (often) embarassed natives of South Carolina have looked on in the past month and have been shaking our heads at our ridiculous governor.
Everytime I saw him on the news saying this nonsense I had an increased desire to drop-kick him. I live in New York now, but my politically-aware friends have not missed an opportunity to ask what in the world is wrong with Mark Sanford. The answer: He's already running for 2012. As are Jindal and Palin (and possibly Perry). But Sanford is the worst. He's written so many op-eds, had so many news show appearances over the past month, all while things go from bad to worse in SC. Unemployment is second or third highest in the nation (I lost track..) and the state remains, as we say there, on the bottom of anything good and on the top of everthing bad. I can't honestly name one successful thing he's done as governor other than prove that he is "mavericky". Him and the other governors are just competing to see who can be more anti-Obama as the warm-up to the potential 2012 primaries.
Yet the Republicans have been eating him up on the national level. I guess they must have forgotten that South Carolina is... well South Carolina. I can't believe they've let him go on this long, the easiest way to own him would just to be to ask him how things are going for him in SC, put up some graphs of our unemployment and watch him do his usual anti-spending, anti-tax thing.
Though, in the end I've heard today that he will indeed accept the funds. In a sick, twisted way I'm a little disappointed, because I wanted him to shout from the mountain tops that he wouldn't and then laugh/cry at the repercussions. But I guess good knows for my folks who unfortunately still live in the hot mess that is SC.
Sorry I meant, good "news" for my folks. I'm new at this so my editing on it is only so-so.
It's either pure political posturing, or these guys are complete morons.
The Clyburn Amendment will give the money to the state legislature if the governer refuses to accept it.
Game. Set. Match.
I don't think Bobby Jindhal is going to turn down the money like I've heard. It would be incredibly stupid for a guy who is on the rise in the GOP.
I wish there were a way for these states to not receive a dime of stimulus money no matter what their respective governors decided.
And particularly in a deep red state like Mississippi, I don't think there'd be much in the way of backlash if the state didn't get any money. It's reasonable to guess that under a McCain presidency there'd be no stimulus package, right? So they can't quite complain about something they wouldn't have had if they'd gotten their way.
It's the great GOP sorting. There's the purists, who won't do bipartisan no matter what (the other bi is still open for question).
Then there's the realists, Collins, Snowe, Crist, Arnold. . .who will do what they need to do to make their constituents happy.
It's political evolution at work.
(I'll also point out that the same kind of sorting got a lot of Dems in trouble after 9/11.)
And I love it.
"I wish there were a way for these states to not receive a dime of stimulus money no matter what their respective governors decided."
Huh? I can't tell if you are trying to be funny or not. You think the whole state of MS deserves to be punished because their Governor is a jackass and 15% more of their population votes Republican? Interesting.
MS, AK, LA, SC are already welfare states sucking on the federal teat. They always get back way more than they send in federal dollars every year. These governors are a bunch of idiotic hypocrits.
What CParis said. Most of these states already get back way more than they put in in federal dollars, so they'd only be balancing the books if they refused the money. Mind you, these are also the states where the politicians talk loudest about "real America" without the slightest trace of irony.
All but the governor of Idaho are likely presidential candidates. Pure political posturing designed to create an "I told you so" moment should the economy still suck in 2012.
The GOP is still stuck in election mode. They figured that it's smarter to pin the stimulus bill entirely on Obama and the Democrats. After all, if it works, Obama would get all the credit anyhow, and conservatives are (or used to be) expected to be wary of all spending plans. If the stimulus doesn't work, or it doesn't work quickly enough, the GOP will look like they were right and wise about it, and they will brag about it on every stump for the next forty elections. And all the while, they wil rewrite history so that it looks like Obama's ascent brought about the stock market crash and the subsequent depression. Whether their opposition is good policy couldn't be less important to them. They just want to redeem themselves in 2010 and 2012. To hell with the actual work of governance and taking care of American citizens. They don't give a shit.
I'm a resident in Idaho and it is a bit frightening. You should know that we regularly fail to receive federal funds we would otherwise be eligible for because they require matching funds. We are being told that state officials are looking carefully to see what strings are attached and that they won't accept any money that requires matching funds or creates programs that we would have to support after the money is gone.
In the end I think they will accept most of it but reject some portion just so they can say they did.
Stacy, must you be so argumentative?
No, I wasn't trying to be funny. With the exception of Bush's [s]election in 2000, citizens end up with the politicians they deserve.
Mississippi in particular didn't just become poor yesterday. If economic prosperity were important to a majority of the electorate there, voting for Gov. Barbour is a rather off way of showing it.
LH,
Based on your opinions about basketball and the death penalty, yes, I do.
Yes, Mississippi is poor. Yes, they are a red state. So, by that rationale, you hope they don't get any of the stimilus money? And you're not trying to be funny? You know, about 43% of people in Mississippi voted for BHO. So yeah, I'm going to go ahead an assume you were trying to be funny.
Just kidding about the basketball. I love you.
Stacy, no, you don't. You choose to be argumentative, so don't make that about me. And I told you I wasn't being funny so you aren't assuming anything.
As for Mississippi and the 43 per cent of the electorate who voted for Barack Obama, you're ignoring the 56 per cent of the electorate who voted for John McCain. Fifty six to 43 is close to you?
If it is, consider that since 1972, Mississippi has voted for the Democratic presidential candidate exactly once. Sounds like a solidly red state to me.
You're also ignoring that Gov. Barbour defeated John Eaves by a margin of 17 points (58 per cent to 41 per cent).
You don't have to see this the way I do but you're going to have to do better than a 43 per cent to 56 per cent minority to make the case that I'm being funny.
They're feeling out their legislatures, and if they think that the lawmakers might actually end-around them, they might actually try it.
Okay, you weren't being funny, but you certainly aren't thinking straight. You can't punish one state because they don't vote for your side. Please be serious. It doesn't matter how big the landslide was in Mississippi. 43 out of 100 people there voted for Obama. But really it doesn't matter if it was 5%. But you know that.
I mean seriously, how can I not argue with you when you say ridiculous things. If you don't think what you're saying is ridiculous, then you are even more silly than I originally thought.
I'll quote you:
"I wish there were a way for these states to not receive a dime of stimulus money no matter what their respective governors decided."
That's not retarded?
I agree with TNC that it is politically stupid for these GOP governors to even SUGGEST that they would turn down the stimulus money.
The GOP has absolutely nothing to use for their resurrection. They are comletely unwilling to do any of the things they need to do to reform their party. Right now they are just hoping for and preparing to invent Obama missteps.
It is not clear to me where they think they can go with this. No matter how they spin it, "We Opposed the Stimulus" is hardly going to be the foundation for a strategy to take back power in the House and/or the Senate like Newt Gingrich's "Contract with America" accomplished for them in 1994.
Watching them flounder and search for a theme is almost repulsive.
They have won elections by amplifying fringe issues in middle, white America. But that was before they had completely destroyed the global economy and engaged us in perpetual war. People are not as interested in abortion and gay marriage when the economy is shedding millions of jobs each month.
There's a Web site that was circulating a great deal after Bush won reelection in 2004. It sums up my feelings toward the red states perfectly:
http://www.fuckthesouth.com
Collective punishment for voters is morally vacuous at best.
Do you support, for instance, continued bombing of Gaza because they voted for HAMAS?
43% of the voting population of Mississippi is 500,000 people. 500,000 actual people. You support a legislative action that will lead to significantly increased job loss, increased poverty, increased hunger, and a slower recovery for those 500,000 people because there happen to also be 750,000 people in the state who voted a different way. That is reprehensible.
And not to mention the non-voting population - I guess we should also cut food stamps and force children of Mississippi parents to live on a substandard diet because of the voting choices of some of the Mississippi population.
I should add I think that punishing the 750,000 Bush voters of Mississippi with job loss, poverty, and a slow recovery is likewise deeply morally troubling. Desiring collective punishment for the whole state is borderline fascistic.
Jindal is aiming to move up the political ladder, but doesn't want to be indebted to the guy whose job he wants by taking their money to save his jurisdiction, our a fear that it would underrcut his candidacy.
It's Mayor Carcetti and the $50 million of education money from the governor all over again. Surprised that the Wire-philes around here didn't make the connection already.