Barack Obama announced plans Friday to send $1.5 billion to Pakistan every year for the next five years, to build schools and roads and hospitals. That’s $7.5 billion dollars. As far, as we know, the Pakistanis haven’t rejected the funding.

Compare that to South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Governor  Rick Perry, Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, and Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, who are all Republicans and who all have announced plans to refuse Federal stimulus funding on grounds that there are strings attached. Sanford is rejecting $700 million, Palin is rejecting $288 million, Perry, $556 million, Barbour, $56 million, and Jindal, $98 million. That’s a total of almost $1.7 billion. (Perhaps we can just send it over to Pakistan as a sixth-year payment.)

It’s quite possible that at the end of the five years, the children of Pakistan will be more healthy and better-educated and have better prospects for the future than all the children in South Carolina, Alaska, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana.

From today’s New York Times’ editorial:

“It would be best, therefore, for Mr. Sanford to find a face-saving way to reverse himself. If he does not, voters should remember that their governor placed politics ahead of schoolchildren and the schools that are struggling to save them.”

Look at these facts:

“Number of South Carolina teachers that a state Republican official estimates will be laid off if the federal stimulus funds are declined: 4,000

Number by which the number of unemployed people grew each day in Louisiana in December: 430″

“Unemployment rate in some counties of Mississippi: 19%”

And then, consider this:

“Number of homeless children in the United States: 1.5 million

Percent of America’s identified homeless children that live in just 11 states: 75

Number of those states in the South: 9

Number of children homeless in Louisiana, the state with the highest percent rate of child homelessness in the nation: 204,053″

Heart-breaking, especially when you consider the role money plays in all of this, and that governors are turning millions of dollars away. Turning away money for schools and teachers and unemployment. Ironically, those 4000 teachers will most likely end up on… yes, that’s right, unemployment. It’s almost as if the governors want to keep their constituents uneducated, unemployed,  and hungry. And they’ll turn around come election time and say, “You think you’re poor now, wait until ‘Joe The Democrat’ becomes Governor and taxes you even more.” And the cycle continues into the next generation, and the next, and the next.

Governor Palin, in a nod to secessionists, said, we won’t “sell our birthright for short-term gain.” I suppose if greater unemployment, more people hungry and on welfare is their birthright, well, so be it.

Turns out, these governors will end up looking like asses, the children of their states will have less-prosperous futures, and be less-healthy and less prepared to know how to deal with all of the world’s additional challenges, all because these five governors have presidential aspirations, fear educated citizens, and just plain care more about an antiquated and erroneous interpretation of principle than the people they were elected to protect.