DENNIS MYERS Against the Grain Advertisement

For students of governance who like to watch for things that work and don't work, there was an incident last month that was extremely useful.

The February stimulus package passed by Congress (if it's hard to keep them straight, this is the one titled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) contained money for the states to continue jobless pay to people out of work who had exhausted their benefits.

In typical congressional fashion, the money did not come unfettered. Of the $40 billion available for unemployment assistance, $7 billion was provided to states that were willing to provide unemployment payments under unusual circumstances, such as a worker put out of work or working only part time when he or she followed a spouse who had to relocate to accept a promotion. This was a service Nevada (and most other states) did not already provide, and there was no guarantee that if it began offering it, federal money would still be available once the stimulus money was gone. States were also told how they had to calculate benefits.

Word got out that Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada was reluctant to accept the money because it could put the state into the position, when the federal money ran out, of either having to cancel the new expanded forms of jobless pay or raise taxes to pay for it.

Offering these new benefits was a policy decision, and it's not clear Gibbons could make that decision. It probably requires legislative action.

U.S. Reps. Shelley Berkley and Dina Titus, both Democrats, were asked about Gibbons' reservations. Berkley replied, "We will be so foolish [to reject the funds]. ... It would be a terrible disservice to all of those people who are unemployed and who are looking to the government for that bridge to get back to work."

Titus said that with the likelihood of higher joblessness ahead (it was then 9.1 percent), she urged "the Legislature to carefully consider accepting these funds."

These comments were pretty mild. They were critical of Gibbons but left room for dialogue. Gibbons immediately increased the mega-tonnage of the debate by several orders of magnitude.

"What is truly foolish is Berkley's cavalier attitude that Nevada should bow down to the federal government and give up its own state sovereignty in a mad grab to claim every last penny of stimulus dollars," Gibbons said, "Congresswoman Berkley's outburst provides no positive input to the state's decision-making process. ... Congresswomen Berkley and Titus need to stop being led around by lobbyists and put the interests of Nevada citizens first. ... I am very disappointed in their partisanship at a time when we should be working together to help the citizens of Nevada. Had Berkley and Titus been working with the best interests of Nevada at heart, we would have raised the funding to help more Nevada citizens who have been laid off, provide more health coverage for families, and create more jobs.

As it is, these two are now griping about an unemployment program that doesn't have federal strings attached, it has federal chains attached. I will not sell out our state's sovereignty."

In terms of federalism, Gibbons had a legitimate point. The willingness of Congress, in a time of hardship and desperation, to use a recession relief measure to expand federal control of state governments is inexcusable. By contrast with Gibbons, his fellow Republican, U.S. Sen. John Ensign made this case with softer language: "That's the problem with the unemployment benefits the way that the stimulus bill did it," Ensign said. "It doesn't just give them the money for now. It ties them into higher benefits in the future."

Had Gibbons wielded cooler, Ensign-style rhetoric and opened a discussion with the two House members, he might have made some points, both with them and the public. But after being denounced in such extreme terms, how receptive were Berkley and Titus likely to be? Or to put it another way, if you were one of the House members and wanted to discuss the issue, who would you choose to discuss it with -- Gibbons or Ensign?