Virginians know there’s no such thing as free money
By: Barbara Hollingsworth
Examiner Columnist
June 1, 2009
Three contenders are still duking it out for Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination, but party strategists have already turned their attention to the general election, where either Creigh Deeds, Brian Moran or Terry McAuliffe will take on Republican “Bob for Jobs” McDonnell.
Common Sense Virginia, an out-of-state group funded by the Democratic Governors Association, is running a series of negative TV ads admonishing McDonnell for his supposedly “career-long failure to stand up for laid-off Virginians,” and for leading the fight to reject $125 million in federal stimulus funds to extend unemployment benefits. This despite the fact the former attorney general wasn’t even in the legislature when Virginia became one of the first states to refuse it. What heartless monster, the ads imply, would turn down free money for laid-off workers?
But they don’t tell what the late Paul Harvey used to call “the rest of the story.” The real question is what responsible public official would take the money, knowing full well that the federal strings attached will strangle future job creation?
The House of Delegates rejected the $125 million because they would have been forced to make permanent changes in Virginia law that extended unemployment benefits to 6,867 part-time workers and another 1,043 in retraining programs– who would still be eligible for benefits after the federal stimulus funds ran out.
Virginia’s unemployment benefits had already been extended from 26 weeks to a year and two months without the disputed $125 million, House Speaker William Howell told me. So why is three percent of Virginia’s $4 billion stimulus package becoming such a big issue in the campaign?
Under Gov. Tim Kaine, who also happens to be chairman of the Democratic National Committee, unemployment in Virginia nearly doubled to 6.8 percent. That’s not exactly something to brag about when you’re asking people to keep your party in office.
Attacking McDonnell for a vote he didn’t even make diverts attention from the real issue: Virginia is losing jobs. Raising payroll taxes will accelerate this process, not reverse it.
The government can force employers to lay off workers, but even President Barack Obama himself can’t force them to hire. FDR found this out the hard way when all of his make-work efforts barely dented the double-digit unemployment that plagued his administration long after the Great Depression had ended in Europe.
In “New Deal or Raw Deal?,” historian Burton Folsom, Jr. quotes FDR Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau, who frankly told the House Ways and Means Committee: “...We have tried spending money. We are spending more than ever spent before and it does not work...after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started... And an enormous debt to boot!”
The current strategy could very well backfire when it becomes clear that two Democratic governors are leaving Virginia with growing ranks of unemployed workers – not exactly something they want voters to think about when they go to the polling place this November.
Barbara F. Hollingsworth is The Examiner’s local opinion editor.
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