COLUMBIA, S.C. — Gov. Mark Sanford on Wednesday became the first governor to reject some of his state’s share of President Barack Obama’s economic-stimulus money, spurning $700 million that he said would harm his state’s residents in the long run.
Sanford, a Republican who served in Congress in the 1990s, made his announcement at three sites across South Carolina in a day-long tour that fed speculation that he’s eyeing a 2012 presidential run.
South Carolina’s Republican-controlled General Assembly is poised to rebuff Sanford and seek the stimulus money on its own.
Republican legislators who have clashed with Sanford for years over his radical anti-spending stances joined Democrats in an overwhelming vote Monday to include $350 million in stimulus money in the 2009-10 state budget.
Sanford turned down the federal money despite new data showing that his state’s unemployment rate had risen to 10.4 percent, the second-highest in the country.
“We don’t think it’s a good idea to spend money that you don’t have,” Sanford said in Columbia. “Reforming state government — that can lead to job growth in the state.”
Claiming that the stimulus money would destabilize South Carolina’s economy, he said: “We need to look longer term and much more holistically at the notion of economic stimulus.”
He said the $700 million he’s turning down would harm his state’s residents by increasing the federal budget deficit and building expectations for government programs that can’t be sustained. Sanford, 48, denied that his decision is tied to his political aspirations.
“I’ve got a 15-year pattern of doing exactly this kind of thing,” he said.
Sanford’s rejection of stimulus money is largely symbolic: Republican and Democratic leaders of the state’s General Assembly say the legislature will seek the money in his stead.
James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who’s the majority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives, crafted a clause in the $787 billion stimulus bill that enables state legislatures to bypass governors who reject the money.
Clyburn, who earlier accused anti-stimulus Southern governors of insulting blacks by spurning stimulus money they need, criticized Sanford’s rejection of the money.
“As South Carolina’s unemployment rate is rising to double digits, parents are losing their jobs and families are losing their homes,” Clyburn said. “Gov. Sanford will sleep well at night because he has improved his ‘conservative record’ and raised his national profile.”
