INDIANAPOLIS — Lost in the commotion about whether Gov. Mitch Daniels flip-flopped on the state aid bill Congress passed last week was another important question: How will his administration decide to use it?
Though specific figures are not yet available, Indiana is due to receive about $200 million to make Medicaid payments and another $200 million to spend on education.
Now, for background, Indiana's history with education stimulus dollars suggests the Daniels administration will find a way to quickly remove any strings that are attached.
Last year, Indiana got $600 million in education aid from the federal stimulus. The state promptly sent that out to schools in place of one of its regular monthly checks.
The difference — those checks usually come from the state's bank account, not the federal government's — didn't much matter to school corporations, since the amount they received was the same as usual.
Furthermore, by doing so, Indiana got to work an extra $600 million into the two-year budget that lawmakers passed in June 2009.
Makes sense, right? The only problem is there's no way to tell whether the $600 million that was saved all ultimately went to education, or was used to fund the budgets of other agencies and programs.
In a letter sent to Daniels on Friday, Indiana House Speaker B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, said as a result of the way the first round of education aid was handled, "there was no additional support provided to K-12 education and the full effectiveness of the federal stimulus bill was negated."
That's partially true. Since K-12 education makes up 55 percent of the state's budget, it's not accurate to say schools saw no additional support from the stimulus. But it is fair to argue they might have received less than the federal government intended to provide.
What happens this time is worth watching once the $200 million check arrives.
Senate campaign
Reader reaction to an article I wrote last week about the stance Indiana's U.S. Senate candidates are taking on the future of Social Security was interesting.
Specifically, the article focused on the candidates' stances on a plan by Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., which would replace the current system with one in which individuals can set some of the taxes they pay aside in individual accounts.
The Republican candidate, Dan Coats, believes that's an idea worth consideration, and thinks reforming entitlements needs to be part of this election year's conversation.
The Democratic candidate, Brad Ellsworth, strongly denounces Ryan's plan but declined to pitch any specific solutions of his own. Instead, he wants to wait until a bipartisan deficit-reduction commission finishes its work in December.
After the article ran on Monday, I heard comments from readers — some by phone and e-mail, and others posted on courierpress.com — that fit into two distinct categories.
Those in the first group didn't necessarily agree with everything Coats said, but they gave him credit for putting the issue on the table and offering one possible solution as a starting point for discussion.
As for Ellsworth's stance, that group essentially made the point that Coats is on the field playing the game, while Ellsworth is booing from the sidelines. "Brad shows he has no plan to rescue Social Security," one commenter wrote.
The second group, meanwhile, preferred the status quo and considered Ellsworth there with them. They pitched options such as lifting the current cap that keeps the rich from having to pay Social Security taxes on the full amount of wages they earn.
"While Brad may not have a plan, the Republicans have a plan to waste it, that is for sure," wrote a commenter who fit into that category.
Will most voters credit Coats for touching a politically dangerous issue or penalize him for his stance? Will they credit Ellsworth for opposing Ryan's ideas, or will they penalize him for declining to take a strong one of his own?
We'll find out in November.