Schwarzenegger on stimulus: Obama needs GOP to be 'team players' Jeremy Gantz and David Edwards

Published: Sunday February 22, 2009





Print This Email This California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has a very simple message for any GOP governor who doesn't want federal stimulus package money earmarked for his or her state: "I'll take it."



"I feel very strongly that I think that President Obama right now needs team players," Schwarzenegger said Sunday morning on ABC's "This Week George Stephanopolous." "It's a very difficult time now, where we have to play together, rather than using politics and always attacking everything," he said.



Gov. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, along with a handful of other Republican governors, has said he would not accept all of the $8 billion set aside for his state in the $787 billion stimulus bill signed into law by President Obama days ago.



But Schwarzenegger, who on Friday signed a $42 billion California state budget into law, averting a major fiscal disaster, sees the stimulus money a bit differently.



"I'm more than happy to take [Sanford's] money or any other governor in this country that doesn't want to take this money,...because we in California can need it.



"I think that it is a terrific package," Schwarzenegger continued. "I think California benefits tremendously from that $80 billion that is tax benefits there of around $35 billion. There's other advantages, $45 billion of monies that go to transportation, to education, to health care, and all those different areas."



Schwarzenegger isn't alone in his willingness to accept stimulus money passed over by Republican governors. Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan, which has the nation's highest unemployment rate, said the same thing Sunday morning.



"You better believe I'm going to take every dollar that is coming to Michigan and if my colleagues here, Minnesota and South Carolina, don't use theirs, I'm going to be first in line to say for my people, for our citizens, to put people to work and to make sure they can survive through this," she said on Fox's Fox & Friends Sunday morning.



Asked if the GOP risks becoming the party of Herbert Hoover by opposing the stimulus bill, Schwarzenegger said something that likely surprised his party colleagues: "You know, I don't think that the Republican Party is any different than the Democratic Party. I think that politics -- the horrible thing about politics is that, the more they attack each other, the more that they try to derail each other, the worse it is for the people."



This video is from ABC's This Week, broadcast Feb. 22, 2009.









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