Bobby Jindal Touts Louisiana's Economic Successes While Refusing to Credit Stimulus Package
By Heather Thursday Jul 30, 2009 5:30am
Bobby Jindal continues to refuse to credit the stimulus package for Louisiana's economic recovery even though as Think Progress noted, he was happy to go around the state presenting jumbo sized checks which included money from those funds.
Gov. Bobby Jindal (R-LA) reemerged on the national stage yesterday, penning an op-ed in the Politico to slam efforts to reform health care and declaring the Economic Recovery Act a failure. Jindal declared the Recovery Act “a nearly trillion-dollar stimulus that has not stimulated.” However, less than 24 hours before Jindal published his op-ed, Jindal traveled to Anacoco, Louisiana to present a jumbo-sized check to residents of Vernon Parish. The funds included hundreds of thousands of dollars directly from the Recovery Act — at least $157,848 in Community Block Grant money authorized by the Recovery Act and $138,611 for Byrne/JAG job training programs created by the Recovery Act. Rather than credit the federal government or the Recovery Act he opposed, Jindal printed his own name on the corner of the massive check.
When asked about this on Blitzer's The Situation Room, Jindal refused to acknowledge that the stimulus package has been successful, and instead touted the use of the line item veto and said the stimulus money should have been temporary and targeted, and included more tax cuts. Blitzer didn't ask him about the jumbo sized checks he was using for photo ops.
I thought they weren't going to allow that to happen?
Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) has a message for Republican governors hemming and hawing over whether to accept the stimulus money Uncle Sam is mailing to each state: Take it or leave it.
Several GOP governors, including Louisiana's Bobby Jindal and South Carolina's Mark Sanford, have cited ideological differences with the stimulus spending and suggested they may take some parts of it and decline the rest. For Schumer, it's all or nothing.
"No one would dispute that these governors should be given the choice as to whether to accept the funds or not. But it should not be multiple choice," Schumer writes in a letter to Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag.
So why is Jindal being allowed to use the line item veto to block part of the stimulus spending in Louisiana? Full transcript below the fold.
