S.C. rep: 4 governors indifferent to poor blacks

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The highest-ranking black member of Congress on Friday accused Southern governors who oppose economic stimulus spending of indifference to the plight of poor blacks who might benefit from the federal money.

House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., amplified earlier statements that the governors’ hesitation in accepting stimulus money had insulted him because “these four states are in the heart of the black belt.”

Clyburn singled out Republican Govs. Mark Sanford of South Carolina, Rick Perry of Texas, Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Haley Barbour of Mississippi for criticism.

The four governors have said that they might turn down their states’ shares of the $787 billion stimulus bill that Congress passed last week — with almost no Republican support — and that President Barack Obama signed into law Tuesday.

Clyburn said the measure reserved some money for census tracts in which more than one-fifth of the residents had lived at or below the federal poverty level for the last 30 years. He said that 12 of South Carolina’s 46 counties qualified for the targeted aid, all along the impoverished Interstate 95 corridor.

“Now the [South Carolina] governor says, ‘I don’t want to accept the money,’” Clyburn told CNN. “That’s why I called this an insult. That’s why I said this is a slap in the face; because a majority of these counties are, in fact, inhabited by African-Americans.”

Sanford, the chairman of the Republican Governors Association, said that he and Clyburn held different views of Obama’s plan to jolt the economy through massive government spending combined with tax cuts.

“Rep. Clyburn and I disagree on this,” Sanford told Fox News on Thursday. “He thinks it’s a good idea. I think it’s a horrible idea.”

Clyburn’s comments, after recent controversies over a New York Post cartoon and remarks by Attorney General Eric Holder, suggest that race remains a sensitive topic in the United States a month after its first black president was inaugurated.

Sanford’s spokesman, Joel Sawyer, said that Clyburn “is no stranger to playing the race card” and added: “Spending money at the federal level that we do not have represents a future tax increase on all South Carolinians, regardless of their color.”