The Sunday morning political talk shows were littered with GOP governors, some of whom made a show of turning down stimulus money. Well, in reality, appearing to turn down stimulus money for the cameras.Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana said, "The $100 million we turned down was temporary federal dollars that would require us to change our unemployment laws. That would have actually raised taxes on Louisiana businesses. We as a state would have been responsible for paying for those benefits after the federal money disappeared."
Republican Gov. Haley Barbour of Mississippi said, "If we were to take the unemployment reform package that they have, it would cause us to raise taxes on employment when the money runs out -- and the money will run out in a couple of years."
Even Georgia's red state governor, Sonny Perdue, made a point of saying that he may not accept all of the stimulus money, saying that "it might not be in the state’s long-term interest to accept it."
The Republican governors of Idaho, Alaska, Texas, South Carolina and Louisiana expressed similar concerns... except ALL of them plan to accept a bulk of the stimulus package money that comes to their states. The amount that Jindal is "turning down" amounts to about 2 percent of the stimulus money that is slated to go to Louisiana. And similarly with Mississippi, that governor isn't turning down all of the money coming to his state.
And California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said his state is almost broke, so he's going to take whatever is offered.
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plez sez: petty politics, as usual. those governors found the area with the least amount of money and then acted like they were doing something big, by turning it down.
plezWorld laughs!
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Read the New York Times article about the disagreement amongst GOP governors over the stimulus money.
Read the AJC.com article about the Georgia's Republican Governor Sonny Perdue thinking about turning stimulus money down.
Read the CNN.com article about the grandstanding GOP governors.
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just the ones in the south - as usual. Idaho and alaska may as well be the south too
ReplyDeleteI agree it's grandstanding. The Governors already no that if they don't take the money there's a clause in the package that would allow the state to over ride their decision and take the money.
ReplyDeleteDid Jindal not think that this might be an instance where the unemployed would employ their 2nd Amendment rights for the intended purpose.
ReplyDelete