A month or so back, Gov. Mark Sanford (SC) was working on burnishing his party bones by sounding off on bailouts and fiscal stimulus:
South Carolina’s Gov. Sanford is resisting the urge to propose or accept raising taxes. Faced with a shortfall, Gov. Sanford reconvened the state Legislature in October, and it made $488 million in targeted budget cuts.
Gov. Sanford, unlike most of his colleagues, speaks out against any federal bailouts, including a fiscal stimulus bill that is likely to include state aid. “When times go south you cut spending,” Gov. Sanford said. “That’s what families do, that’s what businesses do, and I don’t think the government should be exempt from that process.”
But in the midst of the largest financial crisis in decades, Gov. Sanford said he wouldn’t be surprised if the Republican governors who do raise taxes get a pass with voters. “There’s enough confusion and, frankly, fear out there with regard to what’s happening to the economy…that they’re really not going to watch some fee or some relatively incidental tax” that rises, he said.
Notwithstanding the Governor’s demonstration that he hasn’t a clue of the difference between micro and macro economics, he also wrote an op-ed for the WSJ Don’t Bail Out My State. But in the face of South Carolina’s unemployment funds running out, he’s been forced to ask for federal funds to cover unemployment benefits in a state with the nation’s third largest unemployment rate. The Governor has contrived a story designed to cast doubt on the agency that disburses the funds — even though the agency undergoes routine audits and the BLS says that the agency calculates its unemployment stats the way everyone else does.
There’s going to be alot of this in the future — as ideology (failed in the most part already) runs into the real world’s economic state.