White House, N.Y. Face Off Over 9/11 Funds

If the federal government sends you money to use for a specific purpose, then you'd damn well better use it for that purpose. Anybody who receives federal grants for any reason knows that. But the lawmakers in New York must think they're special. George Bush pledged to send $200 billion in federal aid to help New York recover after 9/11. That included $175 million for the state's worker's compensation program. Of that money, they've only spent about $48.4 million. Then there's the $25 million for out of state workers. They've spent less than a million on those claims. Apparently, their needs were greatly over-estimated. So now the Fed wants the extra money back. But these New York lawmakers want to hang on to the money to pay out claims for respiratory illnesses suffered by the police, firemen, and construction workers. Now I'm sure they have a valid need for that money, but you should ask congress to appropriate more spending for that purpose. They gave you the money to spend for a reason, and that's what you should have spent it on. If you didn't need it all for that purpose, send it back. You can't just hang on to money that's not yours until you work out a deal to keep it. We went through this same crap back in 2000 over the so-called budget surplus. It was actually a projected surplus over 10 years, meaning there never was a surplus, but I'm not here to split hairs. Anyway, rather than give it back in a tax cut, the Democrats wanted to spend it to solve the social security crisis, which according to them today, doesn't exist. But now I'm going off topic. The theme here is that Democrats don't understand how to keep the books. If you go over, you can't just take that money and use it on something else.