Republican and Democrat governors are bonded like peas in a pod in one common complaint about their treatment by Washington officialdom.
It's the morbidly sounding political pejorative, "unfunded mandates"—federal laws that thunder down on states without compliance funds attached.
Idaho Republican Gov. Dirk Kempthorne is something of a walking encyclopedia on "unfunded mandates." He was chair of the Republican Governors Association when complaints were loud and frequent and a U.S. senator during which, according to the governors association Web site, "he wrote, negotiated and won passage of ... a bill to end unfunded federal mandates on state and local governments..."
If life for states before now under the Washington thumb was awful, it has the potential to be perfectly torturous under President Bush's era of "austerity."
State programs funded fully or partially by Washington either will end or fall to already cash-strapped states to support.
The president is disingenuous to blame the war: His number crunchers have conveniently omitted the cost of future Iraq operations as well as multi-billions of planned borrowing to convert Social Security into a chancy crap shoot for young workers.
"Austere" spending also can be laid to the loss of revenues due to huge tax cuts he wants made permanent.
So, all this begs the question: Will the 28 Republican governors, who are otherwise politically obedient, revolt and show the same spunk as when fighting "unfunded mandates" in the past?
A Democratic governor, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, has quickly set the pace: She sent Attorney General Alberto Gonzales a $118 million bill for housing 3,600 illegal immigrants at Washington's request in state prisons the past 18 months.
Napolitano and other border governor's ain't seen nothin' yet, however. Instead of providing funds for 2,000 new Border Patrol agents as planned, the president pays for 210.
The border sieve will simply leak more illegals into the United States, and presumably land more in state prisons at state expense.
Immigration enforcement isn't the only inadequately funded Washington program. Local police and firefighters throughout the nation have been called up for National Guard duty in Iraq, leaving emergency services in hundreds of cities understaffed because of the Pentagon.
Funds for fielding more police on American streets is being folded. Meeting new federal education standards isn't backed up with dollars.
Budget cuts and deletions are simply too many to list.
This challenge is tailor-made for Gov. Kempthorne, a man who boasts of battling unfunded mandates with relish in the U.S. Senate.
Does he still have the same fight when a political soul mate must be taken on?
