Blog

Your Education Road Map

Politics K-12®

ESSA. Congress. State chiefs. School spending. Elections. Education Week reporters keep watch on education policy and politics in the nation’s capital and in the states. Read more from this blog.

Education Funding

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford: Unleashed

By Michele McNeil — June 08, 2009 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican who has been told by his state Supreme Court to submit an application for the stimulus program’s state fiscal stabilization fund, has finally done so. The cover letter alone is worth a read. Here are some highlights:

On the stimulus in general: “A monumentally terrible idea...”

On submitting this application: “I’'m signing these documents under duress...”

Perhaps his most compelling point (although still a great, quotable line) is on whether governors can really be held accountable for the stimulus program’s “assurances”: “In reviewing this application, for me it again highlighted the absurdity of ramrodding federal dollars into the states when I suspect more governors than myself have little ability or wherewithal to say with certainty that these and other conditions under the law can, or will be, carried out. In this case it makes something of a mockery of the law itself...”

Related Tags: