The following is a commentary by Les Gara (Alaska Rep.) about the flat-
out LIES the McCain has spoon-fed it's gullible supporters about Sarah
Palin's history in Alaska.
For you fiscal conservatives you may like this: Even after all of
Palin's vetoes (for things like the WIC program), State spending has
been up 20% since she took office.
Hmmm...didn't she say she had CUT SPENDING?
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Over the past few weeks we Alaskans have been scratching our heads
over the interesting claims the McCain campaign has made about our
Governor. A lot of them have been news to us. Governor Palin’s
nomination to the McCain ticket has created unusual common ground for
Alaskans. Whether we support her or not, we’ve been furrowing our
eyebrows a lot lately as we watch the McCain campaign re-write Alaska
history.
As a legislator who’s both agreed and disagreed with
Governor Palin, I know some of her positions are difficult to sell.
Some are not. But to avoid that whole messy thing of explaining
controversial positions, the spin doctors running the McCain campaign
are doing what got George Bush elected. Many campaigns spin in the
gray areas, where the truth isn’t clear. But the McCain campaign’s
taken a page from Karl Rove, and decided to spin past the margins.
They’re pitching the verifiably false as true.
During the August Republican National Convention, Alaskans
heard for the first time that our Governor opposed a national symbol
of federal pork, what folks in the Lower 48 call the “Bridges to
Nowhere.” We didn’t know that. In her 2006 Governor’s campaign,
when her opponents took the risk of telling boomers these two bridges
might be too expensive – candidate Palin said she supported them – and
said she’d work to get more Congressional money for them.
Now the campaign has a new line, that Governor Palin “told
Congress thanks, but no thanks” for this money. That’s a problem.
See, she never could have said that. Congress debated our Alaska’s
request for $400 million in bridge money in 2004 and 2005, before
Palin was elected Governor. A national outcry against these
projects, at a time when a Republican Congress was pushing pork over
effective relief for Hurricane Katrina’s victims, forced Congress to
re-write this earmark. Alaska ultimately got the money in 2005, but
the Congressional language requiring that we spend it on these bridges
was deleted. We said thank you. Governor Palin never opposed this
funding. She never offered to return it when she took office in
2007.
Then there’s the claim by Senator McCain that our Governor
has been a “maverick” fighting federal earmarks. We didn’t know that
either. Alaska takes more federal earmarks per capita than any state
in the country. Governor Palin asks for them. She, like her
predecessors, happily accepts them. Alaska’s budget contains hundreds
of millions in earmark dollars. Alaska politicians love earmarks, and
campaign on their ability to get them.
We also heard at the Convention that Governor Palin’s been
a budget cutter. But in Governor Palin’s two years as Governor state
spending has gone up by 20%. She did veto projects, and I supported
those vetoes. But after vetoes, there’s still been a 20% budget
hike. Depending on your views, a 20% spending increase might be
defensible. It’s not defensible to make people believe you cut the
budget when you didn’t.
Here’s what else I know about my state. We have the third
worst children’s health insurance program in the nation. The Governor
wouldn’t support cost-effective measures to extend insurance to the
10,000 children of Alaskan working parents who cannot afford
coverage. She campaigned against a recent proposal to prevent large
strip mines from spilling toxic chemicals into Alaska’s salmon waters
– something that’s raised the ire of fishermen and Alaska Natives in
remote Southwest Alaska communities. Thirty-five to forty percent of
our kids don’t graduate from high school, and we can’t convince
Governor Palin to join the 41 other states that have accepted the
science showing statewide pre-k education helps kids succeed when they
don’t have other good options at home.
There are a lot of important issues to discuss this
campaign. They should be debated honestly. So far, as Senator
McCain’s joined Barack Obama’s call for change, he’s only succeeded at
changing the truth.
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