JIndal will call Obama's recession-related package irresponsible

Louisiana (US), Feb.25 (ANI): Louisiana's Indian-origin Governor Bobby Jindal, who has been selected to deliver the Republicans' response to President Obama's address to the joint session of the US Congress, is likely to call the over 780 billion dollar package to end America's economic crisis irresponsible and a waste of federal funding.

In recent days, Jindal has displayed another leadership quality: ideological balance.

He is highly critical of the economic theory of the stimulus package and turned down 98 million dollars in temporary unemployment assistance to his state-benefits that would have mandated increased business taxes in Louisiana.

Jindal is not ideologically malleable. His high-pressure Asian-immigrant background has clearly taught him not to blend in but to stand out. He has tended to join small, beleaguered minorities-such as the College Republicans at Brown University.

He converted to a traditionalist Catholicism, in a nation where anti-Catholicism has been called "the last acceptable prejudice."

Jindal, sometimes accused of excessive assimilation, has actually shown a restless, counter-cultural, intellectual independence, which has earned him some unexpected enthusiasm.

In Louisiana, Jindal is the darling of evangelical and charismatic churches, where he often tells his conversion story.

In some of the most conservative Protestant communities, in one of the most conservative states in America, Piyush "Bobby" Jindal, a strong Catholic with parents from Punjab, is considered "one of us."

This is a large political achievement.

Ultimately, however, Jindal is a problem-solving wonk, fond of explaining 31-point policy plans. (ANI)