Well, this must have been a little awkward:
Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dino Rossi has fiercely criticized the $800 billion federal stimulus package of 2009, saying it did nothing but add to the federal debt and failed to turn the economy around...
But on Thursday, he toured a Whidbey Island shipyard that didn't fit that narrative. I tagged along.
Rossi visited Nichols Bros. shipyard in Freeland, which was the recipient of $841,000 in stimulus money. (The boat-building firm received the money through a competitive grant process under the name Ice Floe LLC.)....
Nichols Bros. boasts of actually increasing its hiring this year - the company employs 210 workers now, up from 130 last April.
During the tour, I asked Collins whether the federal stimulus had anything to do with that.
"Absolutely, it had a big part of it," Collins said.
Collins said the stimulus gave money to customers that translated to work on new or repaired boats. And Nichols said the direct, $841,000 grant enabled the company to do that work faster and more profitably.
The reporter asked Rossi if that news made him change his mind at all about the stimulus bill and the federal funding for recovery, a question Rossi dodged by saying "If something is worth doing, it can be done in the main body of the budget," he said. "My quarrel is with the earmark process." In other words, those additional 80 jobs at this shipyard--which Patty Murray was instrumental in securing--wouldn't have been created had Rossi been in office.
In case you're wondering, Dino Rossi was wholeheartedly for earmarks before he decided he was against them. Of course, he was benefiting personally at the time he was passing them in the state legislature, so I guess that's different.