Sanford and DeMint emerging as knights of the right
Their fight against Obama stimulus plan grabs GOP attention
By WAYNE WASHINGTON -
wwashington@thestate.com
thestate.com
tool goes here One is a junior U.S. senator from a small, conservative state.
The other is a governor and former congressman known for sleeping on his couch in Washington and bringing pigs to the state Capitol to protest what he saw as pork-barrel spending.
Jim DeMint and Mark Sanford are major political players in South Carolina, but they have been blips on the national political screen.
Until now.
Both men were among the most vocal and prominent opponents of the federal stimulus package that President Barack Obama could sign into law as soon as Monday. And both men are positioned to continue to oppose what they see as the big-government tendencies of the new president.
“We see the world very similarly from the standpoint of political philosophy,” Sanford said. “As a consequence, there is more than just a professional relationship. There is a set of values that we share on what’s important in the way the government’s constructed. We do come from very similar starting points on the need to limit government.
“He pushes from his end on the federal level, and I push from my end on the state level.”
The two spoke frequently as they contemplated ways to beat back a stimulus plan they think will burden the country with more debt and crowd out free-market opportunities to create jobs.
“I’m sure they said, ‘What can we do to stop this from happening?’” said Wesley Denton, DeMint’s spokesman.
DeMint invited Sanford, chairman of the Republican Governors Association, to a lunch in Washington to spell out for GOP senators why he thought the stimulus plan was bad policy.
“He had a big impact on senators by explaining that bailing out states that refused to make necessary fiscal reforms would not help our nation in the long run,” DeMint said of Sanford.
“He pointed out that this massive spending of taxpayer dollars would just transfer state debt to the federal government, and that’s not how you create jobs. It will just lead to inflation, higher interest rates and higher taxes.”
Sanford said he and DeMint have written notes to each other and offered encouragement as they fight to keep government on a short leash.
“I’ve written him a number of notes saying, ‘Keep up the fight. I admire what you’re doing both as a South Carolinian and as an American,’” Sanford said. “He’s responded with similar kinds of notes on some of the things we’ve worked on.”
DeMint and Sanford co-wrote a column for the Washington Examiner newspaper last week, opposing the stimulus package as immoral debt placed on future generations.
“A moral argument is certainly in play here,” the men wrote. “Obama just happens to be on the wrong side of it.”
‘I DON’T THINK THIS WILL WORK’
Sanford’s push against the stimulus has placed him in rare company.
Most governors see the billions of federal dollars they could get from the package as a chance to limit the painful budget-cutting they are having to oversee.
The stimulus package could help South Carolina, proponents say. The state has:
• The third-highest unemployment rate in the nation, making an extension of jobless benefits a plus to the jobless.
• Plenty of the type of infrastructure needs the stimulus package is intended to address.
• Many local officials eager to tap into federal money.
Carol Fowler, chairwoman of the S.C. Democratic Party, said Sanford is wrong to oppose the stimulus money.
“It’s not going to go back to the taxpayers,” she said. “It’s going to other states. If Gov. Sanford would like to have that money go to New Jersey or some other state just to make his point, I think that’s a mistake.”
Fowler said the governor should be more concerned with the people of South Carolina than political philosophy.
“He thinks all government spending is bad,” Fowler said of Sanford. “But at some point, you have to take care of the people in your state. Other states’ governors are taking of their people.”
Some governors have ordered key personnel or task forces to look for ways to get stimulus money.
Not so with Sanford.
“We’ve certainly had teams looking at the stimulus but for a different reason,” Sanford said. “I think it’s a gut-check vote on sort of this moral issue of, at the end of the day, borrowing money and printing money to pay for (a) current dilemma, but handing the tab to the next generation— to my and Jenny’s four boys, to your kids and grandkids— is wrong.”
Estimates from the Congressional Budget Office are that South Carolina’s government and residents could get $8.6 billion in combined spending, tax rebates and tax cuts. Nearly $5 billion could flow to the state by the end of next year.
Still, Sanford has been blunt and unwavering in his opposition to the stimulus package.
“I don’t think this will work, period,” the governor said. “The fact that it isn’t going to work has been fairly well chronicled, given the fact that we’ve already put $8 trillion in stimulus, bailout and other (plans) into the economy over the last year and, indeed, it has not worked.”
DeMint told Fox Business News: “If government spending would fix our economy, we would have the best economy in the world.”
Obama has said economists are nearly unanimous in their support for a large stimulus.
But the president overstated that case. Nearly 250 economists, including four from South Carolina, signed a statement opposing the stimulus plan, organized by the libertarian-leaning Cato Institute and published in the Wall Street Journal.
“Spending for spending’s sake doesn’t do it,” said College of Charleston economist Peter Calcagno, who signed the opposition statement. “There are a lot of inflationary impacts to this.”
‘EMERGING’ HERO
Supporters of the stimulus and bailout plans counter that the current economic problems would be significantly worse if not for the federal government’s interventions.
Some of the stimulus plan’s most ardent backers have been Republicans at the state and local level.
When Obama traveled to Florida to tout the stimulus plan, he was joined by that state’s Republican governor, Charlie Crist.
“We know that it’s important that we pass a stimulus package,” the St. Petersburg Times quoted Crist as saying. “This is not about partisan politics. This is about rising above that, helping America and reigniting our economy.”
But Sanford says Crist is out of step.
Sanford said Crist — seen by many political analysts as a potential running mate for Republican John McCain last year and a possible future candidate for the GOP presidential nomination — is not a fiscal conservative.
“I don’t think that a lot of people down here would call him a fiscal conservative,” said Sanford, who might find himself battling Crist for the presidential nomination if both men decide to run in 2012.
“He may be a good guy, and I’ve pleasantly enjoyed knowing him through the governorship. But that he’s some stalwart fiscal conservative is, I think, at odds with the record.”
The conservative credentials of both Sanford and DeMint have been burnished by their opposition to the stimulus plan.
Still, neither man has much national stature, said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia.
“Mark Sanford is known in conservative Republican circles, but that’s it,” Sabato said. “DeMint has a growing profile among conservatives.
“Republican conservatives are looking for new heroes. And DeMint is emerging as one.”
What the political future holds for DeMint and Sanford as bulwarks of limited government and free markets is anyone’s guess, Sabato said.
Sanford’s prospects will, to some degree, be tied to how the stimulus plays out, Sabato said. “Is he really not going to spend the money?”
Sanford won’t have much say in how some stimulus money is spent in South Carolina.
For example, U.S. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., inserted language into the federal stimulus bill that lets cities and counties decide how infrastructure money is spent and lets local schools get direct aid.
But states must compete for some of the grants created by the stimulus package. And Sanford and some state lawmakers have expressed concern about the stimulus package expanding federal programs such as Medicaid and increasing their cost for years to come.
Sanford demurred when asked if he would direct state agencies not to pursue grants or other federal help.
“We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it,” Sanford said. |
