April 05, 2009 09:02 PM UTC

"Both Ways" Bobby Jindal

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• by: Canines

Guess which state has benefited from an unheard of federal stimulus injection? Louisiana. Guess which governor is the most vociferous in speaking out against the new federal stimulus bill? Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal.

This New York Times photo caption says it all:

Gov. Bobby Jindal is an outspoken foe of federal aid, but his subordinates praise it as effective

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04…

NEW ORLEANS – Years before Washington spent $787 billion on a national stimulus bill, it staged an unintended trial run in Louisiana, a huge injection of some $51 billion for which historians find few, if any, precedents in a single state.

The experiment is still playing out, but some indicators suggest that what occurred in Louisiana – dumping a large amount of reconstruction money into a confined space in the three and a half years since Hurricane Katrina – has had a positive outcome. The state’s unemployment rate of 5.7 percent in February was considerably below the national average of 8.1 percent, and it was the only state to see a drop in unemployment from December to January…

Perhaps Jindal will want to return the $51 billion in federal dollars that Louisiana has already received, post-Katrina, in order to maintain some semblance of consistency.