nelson

I was watching the Rachel Maddow Show last night and she had on Senator Ben Nelson.  It is always nice to hear from a real Senator. What were they thinking? Why did they do what they did? For example, for my money, the best hour on radio is Thom Hartmann’s first hour on Friday with Senator Bernie Sanders. Bernie is thoughtful, very progressive and his insight is always valuable. So I was ready to hear what Senator Nelson had to say. Rachel was straight and to the point. Why did you compromise?  Why did you cut stuff that would stimulate the economy? The big moment came and Senator Nelson, god bless him (we say that in the south when we feel sorry for someone), opened his mouth and not one thoughtful statement came out. It was a word salad. He made absolutely no sense.

Watch the video clip (enjoy Michael Steele making a fool of himself):

From Think Progress:

In a move that “flunks” every economic test, Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Susan Collins (R-ME) hammered out a “compromise” stimulus plan over the weekend that “completely eliminated the original plan’s $16 billion for K-12 school repair and modernization, along with another $3.5 billion for higher education school construction.” Bemoaning the cuts, the Economic Policy Institute wrote, “By every definition, the school construction money is perfect stimulus.”

Last night, when MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow grilled Nelson on why he cut funds for new school construction, he could only offer a totally incoherent condemnation of “unfunded mandates” like No Child Left Behind. He suggested that if the federal government provided funds to build new schools, it could somehow represent a malevolent interference in local education issues:

NELSON: Well, the Republicans who are looking to join with us have an aversion to federal money going for that kind of a program. It is a state responsibility, local responsibility. Local governing boards — boards of education. I, too, am concerned about money coming from Washington. As governor, I faced the under-funded mandate of special education where the Federal Government promised to be a partner with it. I faced back here a decision about “No Child Left Behind,” another under-funded federal mandate.

When Maddow pressed him, saying that surely his problem should be with federal intervention into the content of education, not the buildings in which education takes place, Nelson made a 180-degree turn, forgetting his “concern about money coming from Washington” to insist that there was still “an awful lot of money going to education.”

Building new schools seems to be a win-win-win: It puts some of the nearly one million construction workers who have lost their jobs this year back to work; it helps facilitate better learning by improving the classrooms where children spend their days; and it provides a needed and timely jolt to the economy. “By even the most conservative estimates it would create about 150,000 jobs,” EPI wrote.

What’s more, as Matthew Yglesias pointed out yesterday, Nelson and Collins touted their plan’s education funding, specifically highlighting their funding for “special education” — two days before Nelson slammed special education as an unfunded mandate and derided Washington funding of education. All this while they CUT $7.5 billion in funding to help states make progress toward goals set by No Child Left Behind. All told, the Senate bill eliminates more than $25 billion in education funding originally included in the House version.

In other words, Nelson opposes school construction, which would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, because it is like an unfunded mandate. At the same time, he touts the inclusion of more mandated funds for special education, while also cutting money to fund the unfunded mandate of No Child Left Behind.