The Courage of Their Convictions

There were three Republican U.S. Senators and no Republican U.S. House members that voted for the bailout package.

Yet, I’m reading that state Republican leaders are falling all over themselves to divvy up the largess. My own fair state’s esteemed Republican Governor Sonny Perdue up until today was opposed to a $428 million property tax grant. On February 10th, according to the AJC, he said “[I]n budget times like this, from a state’s perspective, I don’t know how we can continue programs that I don’t think have been effective in their ultimate mission,” With the bailout the budget times have changed. Sonny’s OK now with spending a bunch of money on an ineffective tax cut because he can get the money from the feds. From today’s AJC: “Perdue said the state can pay for the grants, which he called ‘ineffective,’ because the government is assured of getting more than $460 million in Medicaid stimulus money. That will free up previously committed Medicaid money for other state needs, including the homeowners’ grants.”

GOP types are principled people, they are always saying they are. It’s obvious they didn’t like the bill (or figured they could get a lot of pub by voting against it as they couldn’t do much to change it) in the U.S. Congress. Shouldn’t they push their state colleagues to refuse to accept the money?

I can just see Republican Georgia Senators Isakson and Chambliss talking to Sonny. “Son, my man, you can’t take that money, it’s a bad idea, we’re mortgaging our grandkids’ futures, you’ve got grandkids, you’re always talking about them.” “Johnny, Saxby, what you talking about, that’s fed money, not ours.” “Son, it’ll come back to haunt us and it isn’t a stimulus, its totally ineffective.” “Ya’ll just be quiet, we need money down here, we’ve cut about as much as we can cut without people taking it out on us. They ain’t going to know that using the fed’s money is going come back on them down the road. Now go on back to Washington and talk against it all you want, just know that you’re there because the people down here are dumb, and it’s my job to keep them dumb. You ought to be thanking me.”