Sanford is Stimulated

Ed Week's Politics K-12 blog reports that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford will be forced to apply for federal stimulus funding, despite his opposition.

South Carolina can now get a boatload of federal aid, some $700 million, largely designated for education under the economic-stimulus law. The state Supreme Court today ruled unanimously that Republican Gov. Mark Sanford must apply for the money.

The court found that the state’s General Assembly had authority in passing its state budget plan, which assumed use of money from the state fiscal-stabilization fund, to order the governor to formally seek the money. The governor had contended that he had the sole authority to request the federal aid. He said earlier this month that he would not appeal the ruling.

I guess he won't be running as the "effectiveness" candidate should he decide to seek the GOP presidential nomination in 2012.

For background, see here, here and here.

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From "The Looking A Gift Horse In The Mouth" Department

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford is still at it (The State: "Sanford's vetoes ignite budget battle"), rejecting federal stimulus dollars for his state-in-need. He's conjured up a convoulted argument to fuel his potential presidential campaign against President Obama in 2012. He says that the federal dollars should be used to pay down South Carolina's debt rather than be used to sure up budget shortfalls in areas like education or to create economic stimulus--the whole intent of the stimulus legislation.

Gov. Mark Sanford vetoed nearly all of the state’s $5.7 billion spending plan Tuesday, a move lawmakers are expected to override today in the latest tussle over $350 million in disputed federal stimulus money.

Sanford has argued the state should pay off an equivalent amount of debt or he will not request the money. Lawmakers included rules in the budget that would require Sanford to request the money within five days of the budget becoming law.

Of course, Sanford is positioning himself as a "fiscal conservative" against Obama, assumedly a "tax-and-spend" Democrat. It appears as though bipartisan majorities in both houses of the Republican-controlled South Carolina legislature are set to reject the Guv'nah once and for all. Now that's a horse of a different color--one that's blue AND red all over.

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Duncan To Sanford: "Stuff It"

U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan vowed to find a way (as reported in USA Today) to get education-related stimulus dollars to South Carolina despite Governor Mark Sanford's perilous, politicized stance against accepting it.

"Let me be clear: We are going to take care of children in South Carolina," Duncan said Thursday in a Newsmaker session with USA TODAY.

The Obama administration last week rejected Sanford's bid to funnel $700 million in education-related federal stimulus funding to reducing South Carolina's debt. He later said he wouldn't apply for the $700 million.

Accepting the education money would "put our state even further into an unconscionable level of debt," Sanford said in a statement. The governor believes that failure to pay down the construction debt would worsen the state's overall debt load.

Sanford is one of a small group of Republican governors — Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and Alaska's Sarah Palin are others — who may reject or consider saying no to a portion of the stimulus money.

It seems to me that South Carolina's pre-existing debt is a creation of that state's policies and not the fault of a federal stimulus law just passed last month. In an Education Week story on this same topic, Sanford's spokesperson was quoted as saying that "the biggest problem remains borrowing money that future generations will have to repay." Listen, the federal government's been borrowing money for years. If this is truly a principled stance against borrowed federal monies -- and not politics as usual (a thumb in the eye of a Democratic president or testing the waters for a presidential run) -- then the Governor should reject all federal monies that could be said to be borrowed. For example, reject all federal highway money and South Carolina can go back to the days of horse and buggies.

Ain't gonna happen because there's no principle here, just politics.

BACKGROUND: "Dumb And Dumber"

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UPDATE: The New York Times weighs in ("Courting Disaster in South Carolina") on Sanford's stance in a Monday editorial.

Now that Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina has polished his credentials with the Republican right by recklessly rejecting $700 million in federal education stimulus money, we keep hoping he will change his mind and put the needs of his recession-ravaged state ahead of his political ambitions.

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Dumb and Dumber

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford's decision on the stimulus dollars is dumb.

The United States faces a Zimbabwe-style economic collapse if it keeps "spending a bunch of money we don't have," South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford said Wednesday.

But with South Carolina's unemployment rate now the second-highest in the country, state lawmakers will attempt to override Sanford and take the $700 million if he turns it down, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer said.

"They will use the total economic stimulus to stimulate the economy, jump-start it, so we can get out of the ditch we are in as a state and as a nation," Bauer, a fellow Republican, said in a written statement Wednesday.

But, as the parent of a two-year-old, this incident at an Arkansas day care facility is even dumber and completely inexcusable.

Ten children at a day care center drank windshield wiper fluid after a staffer served it from a container mistaken for Kool-Aid and placed in a refrigerator, authorities said Friday. The day care owner surrendered her state license Friday.

Doctors estimate the children, ages 2 to 7, drank about an ounce of the blue fluid late Thursday afternoon before realizing it tasted wrong, said Laura James, a pediatric pharmacologist and toxicologist at Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock.

Only one child remained hospitalized Friday morning, after blood samples showed "measurable levels" of methanol, a highly toxic alcohol that can induce comas and cause blindness, officials said. The day care also provided the fluid for testing.

I hope the child hospitalized suffers no long-term consequences as a result of this idiocy.

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UPDATE: Thankfully, all of the children appear to be OK.

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