From Morning Joe April 8, 2009. Mark Sanford is confronted for his political posturing by Donny Deutsch. From Sam Stein over at the HuffPo:
Largely lost in the debate over the politics of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's flirtation with rejecting $700 million in stimulus funds for his state has been discussion of the human cost that such a rejection entails.
On Wednesday morning, Donny Deutsch brought the issue to the forefront, confronting Sanford during a segment on MSNBC's Morning Joe with the reality that a large portion of that money would be destined to help schoolchildren.
"Governor... it is going to go to education," declared Deutsch. "Once again, if my kid is in a class, and now instead of 30 kids there are 60 kids, this money is going directly to education. So tell me why it is not better for me as a citizen of South Carolina and for my children to get this money."
Sanford, who contends that the stimulus money should be geared towards closing the state's deficit and has warned that any other use would create additional government bureaucracy, held his ground.
As Think Progress noted, Gov. Sanford touted his decision which would result in firing teachers "reform".
DEUTSCH: Ideology is all great, but let’s pretend I’m a dad and I’m living in South Carolina. A lot of that money is earmarked for education. If you don’t take that money because of your point of view and my kid — there are less teachers, the tuition for the state schools go up, and education is really affected — this is not just in theory, this is reality. What do you say to me as a dad that I’m worried about my kid in a state that has very poor education records?
SANFORD: Yeah, but here’s the bottom line. What this tug of war is really about is reform within South Carolina. … It’s only in these kind of economic times that you can make the changes that are essential, frankly, to South Carolina being more competitive. So our view is, no, we could make some changes that created the dollars that could then be allocated to education and other things.
