Friday, February 20, 2009

Idaho should refuse stimulus money


Idaho will receive up to $1 billion from the $787 billion stimulus package approved by Congress late last week.

With 50,000 Idahoans out of work and more on the way, businesses struggling to keep the doors open, a few thousand homes facing foreclosure and families in distress, passage of the package came none too soon. The news also led the state Legislature to halt consideration of draconian cuts to public education because of expected federal cash infusions.

Yet, Idaho's two senators made a special trip home Tuesday to explain to Idaho why its entire four-man congressional delegation, including Democrat Rep. Walt Minnick, voted against the federal stimulus bill.

Idaho Sen. Mike Crapo told the supermajority of his fellow Republicans in the state Legislature that he opposed the bill because he isn't convinced that a nation can spend itself into prosperity.

He and Idaho junior Sen. Jim Risch warned that the bill is being financed with debt that will burden the nation's children and grandchildren and will ultimately do more harm than good.

Crapo also told a Nampa newspaper that he disagreed with those who said the Obama stimulus package was better than doing nothing at all.

Risch went even further and claimed that the stimulus bill was flawed, in part, because it contained money to save the California red-breasted harvest mouse and for a bullet train to be constructed between Disneyland and Las Vegas. Both are fabricated claims since neither project is to be found anywhere in the bill.

Crapo admonished legislators to be careful how they spend the money.

We have a better idea. They shouldn't spend it at all.

If the stimulus package is really so awful and so harmful to younger generations, Idaho should make itself an example and refuse to accept the money.

The state should not create jobs that would put an estimated 18,000 Idahoans to work, extend the unemployment benefits of others or improve the roads, bridges and schools that are the backbone of the state's economy. It should do what good Sen. Crapo recommends—nothing.

There should be only one exception. The state should allow the three Idaho counties with a majority of voters who supported President Obama—Blaine, Latah and Teton--to receive money for projects in those counties.

Otherwise, the state's elected representatives are doing nothing more than posturing for Idaho's conservative majority.

Otherwise, Idaho is just a state full of chattering hypocrites.




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