The junior Senator of Arizona recently called for an end to all Stimulus spending. However, a closer look at this proposal shows that it would cost the people of Arizona hundreds of millions of dollars and end transit projects in Phoenix. The White House quickly fired back:
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration is firing back at Sen. Jon Kyl for calling for an end to economic stimulus spending, and it's aiming where it hurts the most - at home in Arizona.
The White House on Tuesday released letters from four cabinet secretaries to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, citing Kyl's comments and outlining transportation, housing, Indian education and other projects in his home state they said would be eliminated if the senator has his way.
Kyl, the No. 2 Senate GOP leader, has said the stimulus spending hasn't succeeded in boosting the economy and that it's adding to the deficit. He's suggested on his Senate Web site and in interviews that spending not already allocated be halted.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/200...
Of course, Kyl fails to take into account that the stimulus has not really had enough time to work, and that the mess left behind by his predecessors was much worse than anyone anticipated.
Fellow Republican and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood certainly did not agree. He sent a letter to the Republican Governor of Arizona asking if she would like to forfeit the rest of Arizona's portion of the stimulus funds:
Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, one of two Republicans in Obama's cabinet, made no attempt to conceal his needling.
Kyl "publicly questioned whether the stimulus is working and stated that he wants to cancel projects that aren't presently under way," LaHood wrote Brewer. "If you prefer to forfeit the money we are making available to your state, as Senator Kyl suggests, please let me know."
This brought a quick, and quite hypocritical response from Kyl's office:
Responding to the letters, Kyl charged in a statement that the White House was resorting "to coordinated political attacks with the Democratic National Committee and the politicization of departments of government by using cabinet secretaries to issue thinly veiled threats to the governor and the people of Arizona." He also urged the president to "consider whether the unallocated stimulus money could be put to better use."
This coming from the same Jon Kyl that had no problem with the former administration politicizing the justice department.
LaHood and other administration officials pointed out just how much money Kyl would cost his own constituents:
LaHood noted in his letter that at least $520.9 million of the $48 billion for transportation projects under the economic recovery act are intended for Arizona projects, including transit projects in Phoenix.
Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said Arizona would lose $45 million for 500 single-family housing loans if projects not already under way were canceled. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said the state would forfeit $73 million his department oversees, including $22 million for homeless programs.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, a Westerner who formerly served with Kyl in the Senate, didn't mention the Arizonan by name in his letter, but referred to "some key Republican leaders in Congress." He said the state would lose $60 million for Bureau of Indian Education schools, among other money.
The Governor however, seemed not to agree with Kyl on the funding, but stopped short of telling him to shut up:
Brewer spokesman Paul Senseman said the governor wants Arizona taxpayers to "receive their fair share" of any stimulus dollars.
"We certainly hope that they're somehow not threatening Arizona's portion of federal funding based on their disagreement with Senator Kyl," Senseman said.
However, just in case the Republican Governor changed her mind, the mayor of Phoenix was quick to volunteer his city to oversee Arizona's portion of the funding:
Phoenix mayor Phil Gordon, a Democrat, said he called Brewer's office requesting that the governor continue to accept stimulus money. He also sent letters to cabinet officials volunteering Phoenix to act as a fiduciary for all Arizona stimulus funds if Brewer were to turn them down.
"The Senator is 2,000 miles away," Gordon said at a news conference Tuesday. "We're here trying to build roads and put people to work."
Of course, the usual suspects including senior Senator John McCain were quick to defend Kyl to make a political point over the well-being of their own state:
John McCain, the state's senior senator, backed up his colleague: "I strongly support the comments of Senator Kyl and call on the administration to retract its threat against the citizens of Arizona."
The president of the Arizona Chamber of Commerce and Industry also came to Kyl's defense, posting a column Tuesday on the chamber's Web site under the headline: "Don't Bully Arizona."
"It is one thing to joust with Senator Kyl over his position, but it is an entirely different matter for Cabinet secretaries to write letters to the chief executive of a state and threaten funding if support isn't provided," wrote Glenn Hamer.
Now, I don't know about you but all this hypocritical railing by hypocritical Republicans about the stimulus spending is getting quite annoying. My own Congressman, Exxon Ed Whitfield complained about Kentucky's piece of the pie when he actually voted than NOBODY should get ANYTHING!!
What is really amazing is that all of these guys who are so dead-set against stimulus spending had no problem whatsoever when they were rubber-stamping the policies of greed and idiocy proposed by George W. Bush that crashed our economy off a cliff. They had no problem allowing him to go to war in the wrong country without oversight which has cost hundreds upon hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands upon thousands of lives.
They were all for giving out no-bid contracts to firms like Halliburton who fleeced American taxpayers for untold more hundreds of billions of dollars while not even doing the job they were paid to do. They were all for the policies of waste and fraud that allowed our injured troops to come home and heal with cockroaches at Walter Reed so long as the public was not aware of it. They are the ones who enabled the waste and fraud that created the need for a stimulus in the first place and now they want to lecture all of us on "fiscal responsibility" because all the money is no longer going to the greediest and least patriotic among us who just so happen to fund their campaigns?? What complete and total hypocrisy!!
Like many Americans I am frustrated at the time it is taking for our economy to recover. However, I think we should focus on the scale of the problem and on who caused it to begin with. Republican control of our government was a huge disaster and men like Jon Kyl and Exxon Ed Whitfield were there every step of the way rubber-stamping every failed policy that created the need for all the measures to try and clean up their mess.
Whether you agree with President Obama on everything or not the fact of the matter is that he inherited a mess caused by the very people who are railing against the measures he has taken to try and help our country recover from the failed rule of a failed party. No person was going to come into the White House and immediately clean up the huge mess left behind by the legacy of a decade of waste, greed and idiocy.
If John McCain would have won the White House, we would be a lot further away from our country recovering because the same policies that caused the crisis would still be used and our country by now would be mired not only in a recession but a full-blown depression.
Americans need a little patience to allow the stimulus to fully take effect. However, the last thing we need to do is listen to the very people whose greed and lunacy got us to the point we were at when President Obama came to office. In retrospect they are railing against their own failure and have proven that they simply cannot be trusted to do anything but crash our economy with their own failed policies of greed. That is the truth they hope we all forget.
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