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GOP Governors Refuse Stimulus Cash
Podcast | February 23, 2009
AIM Chairman Don Irvine's commentary on Republican governors who plan to turn down some of the stimulus money targeted for their states.
Transcript available at mediacrank.wordpress.com
You can also download this podcast here as an MP3.
4 Comments | Post a Comment
In reality Rendell doesn’t care because he will be out of office when the bill comes due from the effect of the federal mandate. ~web hosting
I still am not sure what to think about with this.
Nice post. This is needed by the public. After listening to your post, one thing left in my mind is ‘Why would they?’ Really don’t get their point. I know something is hidden behind all these issue.
February 26 at 3:18 pm | #1 | Link
Re: Statement from the podcast:
“The governors from Idaho, Alaska, Texas, South Carolina, Mississippi and Louisiana are concerned that money targeted towards expanding unemployment benefits will only last for two years, leaving the states to either raise taxes or reduce benefits back to the pre-stimulus level, neither of which would be politically popular.”
These guys are nincompoops making a decision that goes against the best interests of their citizens.
First, if a state has a chance to get back some of the money its citizens paid in federal income taxes - they should obviously take it.
Second, the unemployment problem is severe NOW - but will hopefully be reduced to pre-recessionary levels in “two years” - so - obviously, take whatever assistance is available NOW - and reduce the benefits to their prior level when the fed money runs out. (If the extreme unemployment problem still exists two years hence - there’s EVERY likelihood that the feds will provide additional monies at that time to continue the increased benefits.)
These governors are just partisan jerks trying to get attention and do ANYTHING to embarrass and demean the other party in power in D.C. And - every time these rockheaded GOPs take that purely partisan tack - they shoot the whole damned party in the foot!
These ultra-partisan types are trying to reignite and regenerate the “anti-everything” attitude of the GOP during the Clinton years - but their malarkey - and some of their vitriolic boneheads-in-arms like Boehner (and, in the “old” days, DeLay) simply come across as old, stale and (should be) nearly extinct dinosaurs.
Certainly the DEMs don’t have a lock on making all the right decisions - but these “anti-everything” and obstructionist GOPs may well run their party into oblivion.
And it’s an absurdity for the GOPs to be yammering against “budget deficits” and “the national debt” - since Reagan and Bush II are the presidents who added some record-breaking $10 TRILLION to that some (currently) $13 trillion national debt (Reagan added about $3.1 trillion; Bush II added about $7 trillion - and no other presidential administrations are even close - and the DEMs in D.C. today are simply trying to triage the continuing problems created by Bush and Cheney over the last eight years.