Say Anything Blog

A couple of days ago the Obama administration told Governor Mark Sanford that he couldn’t do something responsible with his state’s share of the “stimulus” spending spree.  Namely, pay down some of his state’s debt.

Today Governor Sanford responded to the Obama administration saying that he felt he could use the “stimulus” money to pay down his state’s debts, and he’d appreciate it if Obama called off the DNC dogs who have been running ads in his state criticizing him for daring to pay down South Carolina’s debt with the stimulus instead of expand it.

Gov. Mark Sanford just sent back a letter to President Obama in response to the rejection letter he received yesterday from the White House about his request to not be forced to use the stimulus money to buy yet more debt. In the letter, Sanford offers several statutory reasons for why his state can use the stimulus funds to reduce debt levels instead of spending it on jobs.

He writes: “I’ve made clear my opposition to using debt to solve a problem created in the first place by too much debt — and I don’t believe this to be an unreasonable position.” ...

He also reiterates his call for the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to take down its ads criticizing Sanford for his stance. “What I find less reasonable is the way this DNC attack ad returns a nation indeed yearning for change back to the same old politics-as-usual,” he writes.

Click through to the link to read Sanford’s whole letter.

The absurdity of this spectacle, which has the Obama administration telling a governor that he must create more government debt that his constituents must pay off with their tax dollars instead of paying that debt down and doing it in the name of “economic stimulus, is simply amazing,  Sanford should be credited with backing Obama into this corner.

The federal government is essentially telling a duly elected Governor of a sovereign state that he should shut up and do what the federal government tells him.  That’s not how our Republic is supposed to work.