Say Anything Blog

Hey Obama, this is what leadership looks like.

The Governor’s press release:

March 19, 2009, Juneau, Alaska - Governor Sarah Palin submitted her federal economic stimulus appropriation bill to legislators today to provide jobs and needed infrastructure improvements in Alaska under the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act (ARRA). Governor Palin is accepting just 55 percent of the available stimulus funds, all for capital projects. This amount includes the funds the state accepted last month for Department of Transportation projects.

“We will request federal stimulus funds for capital projects that will create new jobs and expand the economy,” Governor Palin said. “We won’t be bound by federal strings in exchange for dollars, nor will we dig ourselves a deeper hole in two years when these federal funds are gone. For instance, in order to accept what look like attractive energy funds, our local communities would be required to adopt uniform building codes. Government would then be required to police those codes. These types of funds are not sensible for Alaska.”

This seems like an eminently reasonable position to me.  She’s taking money for common sense things like roads and bridges.  She’s rejecting money that will a) inflate her state’s budget and increase the on-going tax burden to her constituents and b) will enhance federal meddling at the state level.  In short, she’s taking the good and doing away with the bad.

But this is going to make her a target.  The DNC has already been all over Governor Sanford in South Carolina who is also fighting a battle with the Obama administration over the stimulus money.  They’ve been running ads accusing him of not caring about his poor, struggling constituents.  Palin, widely seen as the GOP contender for 2012, is undoubtedly going to be targeted in the same way.  Only more so, given her loftier stature within the party.

Yet she really is taking the proper course here.  Democrats and their mouthpieces in the media will, again, attempt to play on emotion with all sorts of sob stories about people who could have been helped by the “stimulus” money.  But the simple truth of the matter is that the money is expanding the size of government in places that are taking it, and thus increasing the tax burden to the very entrepreneurs and businesses that we’re counting on to create jobs and get us out of this recession.

Rejecting this money is the smart move.  Doing so represents the sort of leadership that looks beyond the demands of the mob, and the whims of the moment, and toward the long-term solvency of the government and the health of the economy.

Would that we had more leaders like this.