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Food for thought.
[link=https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/desantis-rejects-ira-federal-funding-florida/675216/]https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/09/desantis-rejects-ira-federal-funding-florida/675216/[/link]ou dont often see someone turn down $346 million in free money. But thats effectively what Floridas Ron DeSantis is doing.
The Republican governor and presidential candidate has blocked his state from getting energy-efficiency incentives under the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature Biden-administration policy that passed in 2022, [i]Politico [/i][link=https://www.politico.com/news/2023/08/30/desantis-refuses-biden-climate-ira-money-00113397]noted last week[/link]. DeSantis vetoed a request by the GOP-dominated state legislature to establish a $5 million rebate programa program that is essential to accessing $341 million more.
DeSantis hasnt explained his veto decision. [i]Politico [/i]frames this as a story about the coming presidential race, saying the denial could blunt the political impact of legislation that some Democrats believe will be a key factor in the 2024 election. [b]But another and more salient way to think about it is that its part of many Republican politicians strong commitment in recent years to ideological purityand owning the libseven at the expense of impoverishing and immiserating their own constituents.[/b]The result of these choices is, [link=https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/06/red-and-blue-state-divide-is-growing-michael-podhorzer-newsletter/661377/]as my colleague Ronald Brownstein has reported[/link], a de facto split between red states and blue states into two distinctly different countries, with widely divergent outcomes:
[i][b]The gross domestic product per person and the median household income are now both more than 25 percent greater in the blue section than in the red, according to [the analyst Michael] Podhorzers calculations. The share of kids in poverty is more than 20 percent lower in the blue section than red, and the share of working households with incomes below the poverty line is nearly 40 percent lower. Health outcomes are diverging too. Gun deaths are almost twice as high per capita in the red places as in the blue, as is the maternal mortality rate. The COVID vaccination rate is about 20 percent higher in the blue section, and the per capita COVID death rate is about 20 percent higher in the red.[/b][/i]
[b]In short, Republican governors are choosing policies that make the lives of their citizens worse in order to make a point[/b].
