Thursday, June 11, 2009
Legislature / Politics / Woods Governor Threatens State Budget Veto; Republicans in Retreat
Posted by Jeff Woods on Thu, Jun 11, 2009 at 3:46 PM
At a media event ironically to celebrate Tennessee's recognition as one of the three leading states in green-collar jobs, Bredesen denounced Republicans for their proposal, which he called political posturing. He acknowledged he blew up this morning during a meeting with legislative leaders.
"What goes on at the breakfast meeting stays in the room. Outside of that meeting if you ask me about the plan, I think elements of it were stupid. Look, it wasn't a budget plan. It was a political document. ... They were just trying to carve out some position saying 'we're really, really, really conservative fiscally on these things. We're going to hold the governor's feet to the fire.' ... It's just posturing. I was upset about it. It's not what I expected out of people who come here to Nashville to represent people and get us through a very, very difficult budget year."More Bredesen:
"I just said we're deep in veto territory here and you need to make some changes in this thing and get it back in the middle of the road to something reasonable, or we're going to be here a long time."
To a media gaggle outside his office, Ramsey was conciliatory, saying Republicans might not try to kill funding after all for the Haywood County industrial megasite or Bredesen's solar energy projects.
"In the end, we'll come to a compromise on that. That's what this is all about. This is two different branches of government disagreeing, slightly might I add, on philosophy and disagreeing on how a small portion of the budget is to be spent."
But asked how he felt about Bredesen calling his budget plan stupid, Ramsey said:
"Well, he might have even gone even further than that to things that we can't use on television. To be perfectly honest, I was disappointed in that because I feel like that we need to sit down and talk these things out. He and I did talk the other day. It may have gone a little further than he expected it to. At the same time, we're in a negotiating process here. Anything can be done. We have some philosophical differences with him, I suppose. ..."
"We go to breakfast this morning, and he tells us he's going to be leaving for Germany and trying to sell that [Haywood County megasite] project over there. He could have told us that yesterday if he wanted to, but he didn't. We didn't know things like that until this morning. There just has to be communications on both sides, not just one one side to make sure this happens. We just need to stay in communication to make sure the right hand knows what the left hand is doing."More Ramsey:
"If he gets that angry over something like this, I'm sorry. Obviously, he's never had anybody disagree with him before. I don't know. But I think he went overboard just a tad. I don't get into name-calling. Here's the deal. First you argue on the facts. If the facts aren't on your side, then you go to emotion. If emotion's not on your side, then you go to name-calling. That's a terrible way to do business."
Comments (3)
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Good for the governor. It appears to have escaped the TN GOP's notice but what the people of Tennessee need more than guns in every crevasse and restricting women's right to abortion is JOBS.
Shows you what happens when you give your government over to the Republicans. You get a bunch of useless shit that makes headlines but doesn't put a paycheck in anyone's wallet.
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None of the usual suspects are supporting our state's republican leadership...
Tennessee desperately needs jobs, and these are industries that our country is just now gearing up to take advantage of. If Bredesen lands this right, the solar projects will be an enormous boon to the people of this state, and republicans would rather piss it away just to make some cheap "we're fiscally conservative" points with their constituency.
Too bad it took Phil Bredesen to show them what fiscal conservatism looks like.
