Gov. Holcomb, INGOP: American Rescue Plan who?

The Indiana Democratic Party, the organization that advocates for the future of Indiana and its families, today criticized Governor Eric Holcomb and the Indiana Republican Party for their attempt to have it both ways on the American Rescue Plan’s (ARP) dollars that were provided by President Joe Biden and Indiana Democrats like Congressmen André Carson and Frank Mrvan, Jr. Not one Hoosier Republican voted for the ARP, but now that close to $3.2 billion has arrived in Indiana, they are ready to accept the cash to help our state, our budget and our communities. 

Hoosiers should celebrate the success — and popularity — of the ARP and all Hoosiers should feel like our country is getting back on track through vaccinations, a growing economy, and more public education investment. There’s too much at stake to simply take partisan credit and ignore the reality that federal planning and investment has made this happen. 

However, don’t expect Republicans to put down their partisanship and give credit where credit is due – because the INGOP has shown time and time again they’ll never put common sense before their extreme partisanship. Simply look at how Governor Holcomb and Speaker Todd Huston answered the direct question during yesterday’s press conference on the state’s latest budget deal. When asked about the impact the American Rescue Plan will have on Indiana, the Republicans predictably pivoted to their partisan talking points and refused to give absolutely any Democrat credit — even though the media pointed out Indiana’s rosy budget is largely because of federal funding and the passage of the ARP in March. 

Take a look below at the full answer from the Indiana Republican Party:  

Associated Press: What role did the $3 billion in the federal recovery funds in making these budget decisions? Did that make this increase in school spending possible by allowing you to have the state money to cover so many grant programs and construction projects?

Governor Eric Holcomb: Well, it was a lot more money than we had to deal with… (tosses question to Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston)

Speaker Todd Huston: I think, Tom, the answer to that question is that we obviously appropriate it, and we put it into one time uses. It’s for one time dollars. It’s funding the infrastructure. It’s funding the readiness grants. It’s doing those types of things to make investments in our community. Frankly put, the leadership of the Governor, the financial shape of the state – when we – the dollars are being invested in education, those are state dollars. Those are dollars that came from the improved revenue forecast that we received a week ago. So, those are state dollars that we were both surprised but pleasantly on the amount of money. And again, we’ve always said that a goal of ours – a very important goal of ours that 50-percent of the dollars in the state budget goes to education. That’s what we’re doing again this time. We’ve always said the priority to us is K-12 education. It shows in our budget every single time, and it shows again this time. 

Governor Eric Holcomb: And Tom, I think you have another question…but we wanted to make sure that anything we did was sustainable. And so, that’s our fiscal picture and this is what we were able to commit to. Do you have a second question?