Haley was for stimulus before she was against it
It turns out that the “Sanford candidate” for governor, Rep. Nikki Haley, doesn’t have the clean status on the federal budget stabilization dollars as she would like you to think.
In a conversation with conservative blogger Moe Lane, she said she was opposed to the $700 million in stimulus money from the beginning, and backed Gov. Mark Sanford‘s very poor plan to spend that money on paying off bondholders, instead of shoring up funding problems in education and law enforcement.
On March 9, she was one of 108 members of the House to vote for Amendment 73 of H. 3560, the budget bill. Amt. 73 was sponsored by Reps. Dan Cooper, Kenny Bingham, James Smith and Bakari Sellers. The idea behind it was to put the stimulus dollars up front and get it out of the way, and it’s impossible that she didn’t know what she was voting for, since it read, “(SR: ARRA Fund Authorization) It is the intent of the General Assembly to accept all available funds from the State Budget Stabilization Fund contained within the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The Office of State Budget is directed to increase agency federal fund authorizations for funds from the State Budget Stabilization Fund allocated by the General Assembly.”
You would have thought she would have voted in the negative, along with Reps. Nathan Ballentine, Eric Bedingfield, Dan Hamilton, Joey Millwood, Wendy Nanney, Garry Smith, Jim Stewart and Thad Viers. Not so much.
Then, she voted against the stimulus when it came back to the House via Sanford’s veto, saying of it, “As we saw with the override of the Governor’s veto regarding stimulus funds, there are still too many in the legislature committed to spending every taxpayer dollar they can find.” So, what — it’s OK on March 9, but reckless spending on May 20?
