Political Point Scoring
2011-03-11 - by
Having a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor fighting over how to best save North Carolina has sure made our politics more entertaining.
The Republicans passed a bill to save us from Obama-care – which didn’t go down at all well with Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper who the Republican legislative leaders ordered to sue President Obama.
Governor Perdue (at first) took a benign view of the situation then, as usual, waffled. She said she wouldn’t veto the bill. She said she might veto it. She did veto it.
In the meantime, the Republican leaders launched a raid on the Governor’s top pork-barrel fund – the Golden Leaf Foundation – to take the money to pay down the deficit.
Perdue didn’t waffle on that a bit. She vetoed it in the blink of an eye.
Next all these locomotives crashed head-on into the legislature and we had the high drama of two veto fights in one day. To add to the conflict, after vetoing the Republicans raid on her pork-fund the Governor juggled state bank accounts to come up with $500 million to pay tax refunds. It’s not clear why that enraged Republicans (after all, if the state didn’t give the money back to taxpayers somebody would have just spent it) but it did and they declared the Governor couldn’t touch that cash without their permission (which was not coming before hell froze over) and then the State Senate went after the Golden Leaf money again and voted to override the Governor’s veto.
Meantime, over in the House, Speaker Tillis put the Governor’s Obama-care veto to a vote. And Republicans lost. After that the Democrats were feeling their oats and, naturally, Speaker Tillis wasn’t too anxious to lose a second veto vote (on the Golden Leaf money) on the same day, so, making a tactical retreat he shelved the bill. So, when the sun set the Democrats had whipped one Republican veto override and, for all practical purposes, whipped the second one too.
So where did that leave our politicians?
Republicans no doubt scored points with hard pressed taxpayers by trying to get their hands on the Governor’s pork barrel money to pay down the deficit.
Nobody won much either way in the fight over Obama-care.
And Perdue scored big points when, after whipping Republicans, she promptly announced she was sending out 300,000 tax refunds which I’m guessing is closer to taxpayers hearts than raiding the Governor’s Pork Barrel fund.
Political Point Scoring
2011-03-11/
Having a Republican legislature and a Democratic Governor fighting over how to best save North Carolina has sure made our politics more entertaining.
The Republicans passed a bill to save us from Obama-care – which didn’t go down at all well with Democratic Attorney General Roy Cooper who the Republican legislative leaders ordered to sue President Obama.
Governor Perdue (at first) took a benign view of the situation then, as usual, waffled. She said she wouldn’t veto the bill. She said she might veto it. She did veto it.
In the meantime, the Republican leaders launched a raid on the Governor’s top pork-barrel fund – the Golden Leaf Foundation – to take the money to pay down the deficit.
Perdue didn’t waffle on that a bit. She vetoed it in the blink of an eye.
Next all these locomotives crashed head-on into the legislature and we had the high drama of two veto fights in one day. To add to the conflict, after vetoing the Republicans raid on her pork-fund the Governor juggled state bank accounts to come up with $500 million to pay tax refunds. It’s not clear why that enraged Republicans (after all, if the state didn’t give the money back to taxpayers somebody would have just spent it) but it did and they declared the Governor couldn’t touch that cash without their permission (which was not coming before hell froze over) and then the State Senate went after the Golden Leaf money again and voted to override the Governor’s veto.
Meantime, over in the House, Speaker Tillis put the Governor’s Obama-care veto to a vote. And Republicans lost. After that the Democrats were feeling their oats and, naturally, Speaker Tillis wasn’t too anxious to lose a second veto vote (on the Golden Leaf money) on the same day, so, making a tactical retreat he shelved the bill. So, when the sun set the Democrats had whipped one Republican veto override and, for all practical purposes, whipped the second one too.
So where did that leave our politicians?
Republicans no doubt scored points with hard pressed taxpayers by trying to get their hands on the Governor’s pork barrel money to pay down the deficit.
Nobody won much either way in the fight over Obama-care.
And Perdue scored big points when, after whipping Republicans, she promptly announced she was sending out 300,000 tax refunds which I’m guessing is closer to taxpayers hearts than raiding the Governor’s Pork Barrel fund.