A coming train wreck to behold

With a round of primaries over around the country, media is agog at all the Republicans poised to replace Democrats in Congress and state houses.

Laying aside social mischief, it will be interesting to watch the GOP sort out the economy at state and federal levels over the next two years if predictions are correct.

Georgia’s approach to federal love/hate is instructive. The Republican Governor, Sonny Perdue, is about to sign a budget, crafted by a Republican majority legislature, that “balances” by using money from the feds:

“In the upcoming fiscal year, the state will spend $38.5 billion, of which $12.88 billion will come from the federal government. The portion of the budget paid out of state taxes will be $17.9 billion. [The rest of the budget comes from “user fee” type revenue.]

“The percentage of the budget coming from federal taxpayers has gone from 23 percent at the beginning of fiscal 2003 to 33 percent today.”

AJC.com.

Where’s the thirteen billion dollars coming from? The stimulus package that the GOP and Tea Party rail about and will run against in this fall’s elections. They don’t have the chutzpah to do that, do they?

“Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock) called the stimulus package a ‘bogus loan program.’ When the Senate passed the fiscal 2010 budget, Rogers said, ‘While Washington, D.C., saddles us with over $1 trillion in debt, the assembly worked together and passed this budget without a single ‘pork barrel’ project.’

The budget he referred to contained $13 billion in federal funding.

‘We all know the politicians in Washington and career bureaucrats are the problem,’ Gwinnett County Republican state Rep. Clay Cox, who is running for Congress, said in a recent TV ad. ‘They spend money we don’t have, mortgaging our families’ futures.’ He vowed to ‘stop out-of-control spending and debt.’

Cox voted for the fiscal 2011 state budget with almost $13 billion in federal funding.”

AJC.com.

Bash the free-spending liberals in Washington; but, love their money.

So, if GOP and Tea Party candidates sweep into office this fall, just what is it they are going to do? That’s the train wreck I want to watch.