The amount of money being panhandled in the halls of Congress by Gov. Strickland & Co. is an alcoholic’s plea: enough for a sandwich, or a dollar, or whatever you can spare. Like the change tossed to the drunkard, the nation’s treasure will be wasted on the governors’ unreformed habits.Governor Strickland joined other governors Friday in requesting a $1 trillion bailout for state governments from the federal government. A month ago, the governors were demanding a mere $134 billion for the states. You will have noticed how the economy became eight times worse in the past 30 days.
This increased demand came in spite of Ohio’s auto industry getting federal bailout money.
The governors of the several states have no more clue how they will right their ships than did the CEOs of the Detroit Three, who had a similarly elastic calculation of the size of their critical need. The D-3 must-have amount was $25 billion in November, then became $34 billion in December, until the Republicans in Congress finally said no -- and President Bush said yes to about $18 billion, just before Christmas. Apparently, that was just enough after all.
The governors have another thing in common with the bankruptcy-proof automakers: None of them seems to have a plan on what to do when the federal cash runs out. Give them money, and they will ask again – just like that alcoholic on the street.
Gov. Strickland recently exempted Medicaid from his planning for spending cuts. But Medicaid is 40% of the state budget. How, exactly, is this going to work?
The Governor's answer is to ignore the Medicaid monster and ask the federal government to pay the bill for business as usual.
David Walker, a former Comptroller of the United States, estimates our total debt and unfunded obligations, such as Social Security, at $56 trillion. That’s almost a half a million dollars for every household in the United States.
The Governors of Texas and South Carolina are not joining Gov. Strickland in the panhandling line, and write about their reasons in the Wall Street Journal. Both of them are Republicans, and represent the backbone of their party – and the future of America.
2 comments:
Right on, Dave.
Here's a related letter I wrote to Washington Post editors about a week ago.
Cheers,
Jeff Lehner
Dave,
Thanks for reading www.kylesisk.typepad.com and for commenting.
I completely agree with your post.
If anything, you didn't go far enough.
Of course Strickland's plan after being a D Congressman in Washington is to spend Obama's money (i.e. federal money which is really John Q. Gamestop's money, but harder to explain in a 30 second commercial in 10/10 to John Q. Gamestop that this short-term solution is bad for him, worse for his kids and horrific for his grandkids).
But, unfortunately, that is all part of the beauty of Strickland and Obama operating in this way.
At some point this game of "monetary musical chairs" will stop and someone will be left to pay the tab.
They both know that at that point they will be long gone writing books and collecting speaking fees.
My guess is that my 13 year old daughter and my future grandkids will be the ones left standing.
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