Rod Boshart of The Cedar Rapids Gazette gets credit for the acronym GING, which stands for "grow Iowa, not government." That was the main message Senate Minority Leader Paul McKinley (R-Chariton) and the 17 other Republicans in the Iowa Senate sent today in a news conference in McKinley's office. Listen to it and read about it here.
In keeping with "acronym day" here at the statehouse, the Republicans also offered one of their own. It's SMUG which stands for Solutions to Minimize Unreasonable Government. The Senate Republicans want to create a SMUG task force..
And in what I'd call a "Stalinesque" bid to rewrite history, McKinley lamented the state's economic development efforts to pick "winners and losers" through state grants to certain businesses "over the past 10 years" (when Democrats Tom Vilsack & Chet Culver have been governor). I pointed out former Republican Governor Terry Branstad was the first to pick winners and losers through his administration's CEBA (Community Economic Betterment Account) grants and loans which the Iowa Department of Economic Development (IDED) starting handing out in the mid-1980s. And in 1994, Branstad approved an even more lucrative package of tax incentives to lure IPSCO here. That program is was dubbed the "Gold Card" or NJIP — the New Jobs and Income Program — and other companies have benefitted from it in the past decade.
"I can't answer for the Branstad administration," McKinley said when asked if he were rewriting history by criticizing only Democrats for "picking winners and losers" with state grants and loans.
For those keeping score, there were five acronyms in this post.
About O.Kay Henderson
Kay is a founding member of the Radio Iowa network newsroom. In 1994, she became the network’s news director. She’s a featured reporter and commentator on Iowa Public Television’s “Iowa Press,” and the 2002 recipient of the Shelley Award.
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