South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford, who has spent months battling
the Obama administration and his own state legislature over the
use of stimulus package funds, said on a Friday blogger
conference call that he was exploring legal alternatives.
Sanford made two requests to the White House asking for a waiver
allowing him to use $700 million of anticipated stimulus funds to
pay down state debt, both of which were denied. Since then,
Sanford has been in what he described as a "tug of war" at home.
He has pushed to use the stimulus funds to institute structural
reforms and shore up the state's balance sheet, but has met
resistance from the legislature. The issue will come to a head
next week when lawmakers vote on the budget. Sanford called the
vote "the first volley."
He said, "there could be legal work after that and we're
exploring options on that front." Asked if that meant action to
challenge the federal government, Sanford only said that his
legal staff was "looking at legal angles."
During the call, Sanford said he found the tea party movement
"incredibly, incredibly encouraging," because it showed him that
he isn't alone in his frustration with out of control spending.
"There's something going on out there that I have not seen in my
15 years in the political process," he said. "I attended three of
these tea parties, and there was an energy that I have not seen
before, where people are genuinely frightened and concerned about
the long-term ramifications of spending money that we don't
have."
Sanford also expressed disappointment with the early days of the
Obama administration.
"There have been some real missed opportunities," he said. "One
of the things [Obama] talked about from the very beginning was
getting away from the worn out dogma of the past, the old style
politics, and yet when we put in that first waiver request asking
to apply some [stimulus money] to debt, before the White House
responded the Democratic National Committee cranked out ads in
South Carolina criticizing our efforts to try to use stimulus
money to pay down debt and trying to scare folks to call on me to
try and get me to change my mind. That was anything but change
from old-style politics. It was, if anything, a return to
rough-knuckled Chicago style politics."
Perhaps even more interesting than anything Sanford said was the
fact that he was holding a conference call with bloggers in the
first place. Sanford, who had maintained a relatively low
national profile before this year, has been mentioned as a
potential 2012 presidential candidate, so it's worth noting that
he's taking the time to speak to conservative bloggers outside of
South Carolina. He conceded that this was a new thing for him.
"A blogger conference call is slightly out of my comfort zone
because I really don't know what it is," he said.
