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Pawlenty Steals From Jobs So He Can Claim He Tuned Down ObamaCare

Ever wonder where your governor’s heart is? In Minnesota, it’s not with jobs; it’s with political ambitions. Last week, MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) issued an executive order that directs state agencies to opt out of discretionary aspects of the new healthcare reform law.

This means that Minnesota will forego millions in early funding.

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Hotline OnCall reports Pawlenty saying:

“It’s really straight forward in this sense: I don’t like Obama-care, I think it’s misguided policy at a level that’s deeply concerning to me and certainly to others, so I want to do what I can to stop its implementation.”

A note to Republicans: You don’t like being called “teabaggers” and insist that we call you “Tea Partiers” so maybe you should apply the same rules to “ObamaCare”, which you intend as a slur, but which is actually a huge compliment. Yes, the President cares. Please explain why this is a bad thing the next time you have the guts to be interviewed anywhere other than Fox News. In the meantime, try “the healthcare law”. It’s accurate and makes you sound a bit less frat bratish.

Pawlenty makes a lot of noise about being a fiscal conservative, but Hotline further reports:

“Pawlenty’s motives may be called into question, too, for deciding to accept $260M in federal funds for medical assistance aid. On Tuesday, Pawlenty sent a letter to HHS Sec. Kathleen Sebelius requesting funding for Medicaid expansion. That money comes from jobs legislation, rather than from health care legislation, and Pawlenty has insisted there is no inconsistency to his dual positions.”

In other words, he’s diverting money from jobs legislation to pay for Medicaid expenses because he turned down the early funding from the healthcare legislation. Minnesotans, I hope you don’t need jobs, because your governor is putting his career ahead of your needs. Perhaps since Minnesota’s unemployment rate is a relatively lower 6.8 percent, Pawlenty feels he can get away with this, but there are still 6.8 percent of his constituents who are looking for work. And 6.8 percent of people looking for work is not a comfy number. Has Pawlenty forgotten that one in six U.S. factory jobs have disappeared between 2000 and 2007? This isn’t the time to be messing around with money meant for jobs legislation. We are in a recession.

This money also came from the stimulus bill Pawlenty labeled as “reckless”. But I guess when no one is looking, it’s okay to dip into the stimulus that he railed against in order to put on a show about turning down parts of “ObamaCare”. Perhaps the relentless pressure from the state’s biggest private employer, the Mayo Clinic, finally caused Pawlenty to cave.

And it gets worse, because the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a letter last week saying that Obama’s healthcare reform legislation would reduce the projected budget deficit by $30 billion in 2020, while repealing it would increase the deficit by an estimated $455 billion. Which means that this “Big Show about ObamaCare” isn’t worth the air they expel when ranting about the healthcare law, because the healthcare law IS the fiscally conservative alternative to an ongoing problem.

Pawlenty’s putting on a charade of being “fiscally conservative” so he can run as an ideologically pure Republican in 2012 at the expense of job legislation that would benefit his state. He is doing this by taking money from the stimulus he railed against. So he’s robbing Peter to pay Paul and then labeling it fiscally conservative. In doing so, he has exposed himself as a cynical hypocrite and admitted that both the stimulus and the healthcare law were necessary.

It’s easy to put on a show of saying no, but governing is another matter. Would anyone really want someone this disingenuous about his own beliefs anywhere near the White House?

Pawlenty has now joined other stimulus critics Bobby Jindal (R ) and Rick Perry (R) in railing against the stimulus and healthcare reform but being the first in line to hold their hand out for those big, fat, federal government checks.

How’s it feel to admit Obama was right, boys? And that you were too busy putting on a show to actually stand by your supposed convictions? These Bushian fiscal policies are disingenuous and disrespectful of the people’s intelligence. Clearly, Republicans don’t mean the things they say they stand for. So the question becomes, just exactly what do Republicans stand for, other than “no” and “gimme”?