Outgoing Minnesota governor and potential Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty appeared on Fox News and Fox Business last night to defend his recent executive order prohibiting the state from applying for grants provided by the new health care law. Pawlenty’s ban could cost the state $1 billion or more in federal funds, but in his national TV tour last night, the governor compared the federal government to a drug hustler pushing its product on willing addicts:
PAWLENTY: Federal government’s acting increasingly like a financial drug dealer, handing out tastes or free samples, trying to get people addicted, further addicted. And we’ve just had it and we’re not taking the bait anymore. We’re not taking the free samples anymore. This is an executive order that says we’re sending them a strong message, but we’re also going to try to make sure the policies are for Minnesota not because some big federal bureaucracy tells us what to do.
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Of course, the 97 different entities that applied for reform’s reinsurance grants can rightfully take offense to Pawlenty’s drug-dealing analogy and his dismissal of the money as nonsensical. The Wonk Room explains why Pawlenty’s claim that he has a long record of refusing the federal government’s so-called financial drugs, shouldn’t be taken at face value.
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