This is the kind of bipartisanship

I like to see

At the National Governors Association meetings in Washington, D.C., Gov. Phil Bredesen said this week that he might turn down relief for unemployed workers worth an estimated $143 million because of conditions placed on the money by Congress.

…

“We are evaluating this piece of money, whether it makes sense for us to take it,” Bredesen said in an interview Monday with the Chattanooga Times Free Press. “We’re in the position of going back to our legislature this year for changes in our tax structure just to keep our fund whole, and taking it to a new level may be too much of a lift for the legislature this spring.”

This yet again demonstrates the ongoing assault on federalism I discussed earlier this week, where federal money comes with requirements that monkey with state policy.

So, both Democrat and Republican governors are now publicly reserved at the prospect of changing state law because they know, in addition to it being bad policy all around, that the federal money will eventually run out, which means a certain future press for a tax increase among the states who changed their laws and accepted the funds. I admire the political savvy underlying the procedural catch-22 the president has laid out, but it needs to be called for what it is. Accepting the federal money is one thing. Readily changing one’s laws to create additional future unfunded burdens is quite another, and those states who do so deserve the budgetary problems they will eventually get.

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