During last year’s election season, some of the most vitriolic anti-government rhetoric came from GOP officials in the state of Georgia. Across the state, Republican lawmakers ranging from members of Congress all the way up to gubenatorial candidate Nathan Deal demonized the government and praised the free market as the solution to all of the state’s problems:
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Then-gubenatorial candidate Nathan Deal: Deal’s stand against government spending was so extreme that one his spokesmen even compared federal dollars to illicit drugs: “
The thing with this federal money is it’s like a drug dealer: the first one’s free and then they’ve got you hooked and you play by their rules.” (
8/3/10)
Yet all these Republicans are now singing a different tune related to a local government project they have been advocating for. For
years, the port city of Savannah, Georgia, has sought federal funds in order to
expand and deepen the Savannah Port, which would allow for more extensive operations and commerce in the major southeastern port. The Georgia congressional delegation as well as Gov. Nathan Deal had requested $105 million in order to make these expansions in the recent Obama budget. Yet the budget contained only $600,000 for the project, falling well short of the request. Now, these same Republicans are complaining about not getting enough federal spending that they all campaigned against this past election season:
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Gov. Nathan Deal: Deal, apparently no longer willing to compare the federal government to a drug dealer, said the state “
obviously hoped for a much greater show of support from the president.” The governor even went as far as to say that the Constitution mandate that it’s the federal government’s “responsibility” to pay for ports. (
2/15/11,
2/14/11)
Kingston, responding to a tweet asking about the port project from the Georgia Young Democrats on CSPAN, lavished praise on the port project, saying that “infrastructure spending can create jobs.” “There’s a big case out there for infrastructure spending,” Kingston concluded. Watch it:
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