Virginia Turns Down Stimulus Funding

Who would have thought that a state with a Dem governor, who happens also to be the head of the DNC, would turn down Obama's request to change their unemployment laws:

RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia’s Republican-run House of Delegates rejected a proposed expansion of unemployment benefits Wednesday, along with $125 million in federal stimulus cash to pay for it.

On a mostly party-line 46-53 vote, the House turned down amendments by Democratic Gov. Timothy M. Kaine that were necessary to make Virginia eligible for the federal aid.

The vote mirrored a debate raging in state capitols across the nation over whether to accept the federal stimulus cash to cushion soaring unemployment rates in the worst economy since the Great Depression.

Republican governors in several states, including Mississippi, Louisiana, South Carolina, Alaska and Texas, say they will reject at least part of the cash because of mandates by a Democratic Congress and President Barack Obama to broaden state unemployment insurance programs.

Wednesday’s vote makes Virginia among the first states to definitively repudiate the unemployment insurance expansion.

The vote was also a stinging rebuke to Kaine, Obama’s hand-picked chairman of the Democratic National Committee, and becomes a major issue in Virginia’s elections this year for governor and all 100 House of Delegates seats.

This is going to make it easier for Republican governors to turn down the unemployment requirements in their states as well.