Republicans are now realizing that their stand against the stimulus bill is going to be used against them one way or another. Those that stood against the stimulus bill as unnecessary or wasteful may have done so on principle. But it’s hard to ignore the fact that politically it was the right thing for them to do. If they sign up with Obama’s policies and the stimulus were successful, they would get none of the credit — Obama and the Democrats would claim that they turned the country around in spite of the Republicans. And if they signed on with Obama and it didn’t work, they would certainly share in the blame. So opposing it, whether on principle or not, appeared to be a wise thing to do. If Obama’s plan turns out to be successful, Republicans can say they are happy it worked but their plans would have been eevn more successful at half the budget (and who can prove them wrong?). If Obama’s plan fails, they can say they knew it would fail and that’s why they were against it, and they’ll gain votes in Congress in 2010.

Well now that’s coming back to haunt them in a Catch-22 that many of them probably did not expect. The Economics Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ERRA) includes some $44 billion in direct money to states. Some Republican governors are trying to take a principled stand and refuse any stimulus money because a) it comes with too many strings in some cases, and b) they opposed it from the beginning and they are sticking to their principle (unlike Democrats like John Kerry and Barney Frank who are publicly in favor of higher taxes but, when they have the opportunity to pay more in a nice simple check-box on their state taxes, they choose to pay the lower amount instead). If Republican governors refuse the stimulus, they are accused by Democrats of not caring for their people and denying them help:

But state Democratic Party chairwoman Carol Fowler says (Republican Governor) Sanford’s hesitation is driven by his political ambition rather than the best interests of a state that had the nation’s third-highest unemployment rate in December.

“He’s so ideological,” Fowler said. “He would rather South Carolina do without jobs than take that money, and I think he’s looking for a way not to take it.”

And if they take the money, they will be accused of being hypocrites: they slammed the bill when it was proposed but they will take the money anyway if it comes their way. The authors of the ERRA were smart by putting in a provision to allow state legislatures to pass a measure to accept the stimulus funding even if their governors refused it.

I often tell my macroeconomic principles class that there are times when I actually feel sympathy for politicians, especially when it comes to the economic policies they enact. If they spend money or lower taxes to get out of a recession, one group of people slam them for running up the budget deficit. If they do nothing, they’re accused of not caring while the economy crashes. When it comes to Iraq and the war on terror, many claim that Bush did not move fast enough to get funding for troops — the same argument was made after 9/11 about getting money to families of victims. So when Katrina hit, what did Bush do? Through FEMA, he put billions into the region extremely quickly, throwing money at the problem as fast as bureaucratically possible. And what was he then accused of? Waste and mismanagement, as some people who received money from FEMA spent it on non-essentials. Critics on both sides of that issue apparently ignore the fact that the faster you throw money at a problem to fix it, the more likely you are to get waste. You can’t have it both ways — clamoring for something to be done faster and then, after the fact, saying the government moved too quickly and failed to prevent waste and corruption.

There are many reasons why many good people do not become politicians. Always having a group of people clamoring for your head is one of them . The the reality is that any specific action any politician takes is going to upset at least 25% of the country, and that’s if they’re lucky. I guess that’s why Harry Truman said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”