One Republican Governor Might Just Stand Up And Say No To The Stimulus
And no, it’s not Sarah Palin or Bobby Jindal unfortunately (they’re both going to take the money), but rather Mark Sanford of South Carolina:
The most outspoken critic has been South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has warned for months of a steep spike in inflation and a severely weakened dollar if Obama’s plan passed. His state is on track to receive $2.1 billion of the stimulus money; Sanford has not yet said whether he would accept it.
“It’s incumbent on me as one of the nation’s governors to speak out against what I believe is ultimately incredibly harmful to the economy, to taxpayers and to the worth of the U.S. dollar,” Sanford said in an interview. “This plan is a huge mistake and is going to prolong and deepen this recession.”…
Associates say Sanford, who recently was elected chairman of the Republican Governors Association, has been disappointed in how few of his GOP colleagues have joined him in speaking out against the size and scope of Obama’s plan.
I hope that Sanford ultimately says no to his state’s share of any “stimulus” spending, because he’s exactly right about the harm that stimulus will do. Oh, sure, it might be a big influx of cash for states with budgets that are in the red, but what problems does it fix? And what new problems does it create?
The “stimulus” won’t fix any problems in these states, because the problem is that these states are spending entirely too much money. Giving them a one-time bailout (at least we should hope it’d be only one time) would only serve to obfuscate the overspending that is the cause of the problem in the first place. If these states don’t have enough money they need to fix their budgets by either raising revenue or lowering spending, not looking to the federal government for a handout.
And the “stimulus” might actually create problems by creating spending projects that would weight on state budgets in the future once the “stimulus” money is gone. Since we don’t want a situation where the federal government is endlessly bailing out state spending, we should say no to this very first “stimulus.” Because one bailout only creates an expectation of more bailouts.
Do the right thing, Governor Sanford. Help lead the GOP out of the wilderness. Say no to the “stimulus.”
