Stimulus Stupidity and the Shaft We Are All Getting For Our Tax Dollars
June 17, 2009 - Recently the White House released a report detailing its top 100 projects from the President’s stimulus package. The report was intended to highlight the “successes” of the stimulus bill and to show that all of the recent Washington spending is creating jobs and helping to drive the economy forward. But there is another side to the stimulus bill. A stupid side that proves that there are no limits to the imaginations of Washington’s politicians when it comes to spending. And those imaginations are being highlighted in a new report that has been released by Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK).
Coburn released his report yesterday. The report details what are perhaps the 100 worst projects that are being funded with stimulus money. Things like a $1.3 million tunnel for turtles (yes, you read that correctly) in Florida.
Coburn himself has a list of top ten – or rather the bottom ten – projects that he highlights as wasteful in the report. But Coburn’s top ten seem to be based on funding more than on entertainment value. So I thought that I’d give you my top ten from Coburn’s list of 100. And here they are:
1.Road signs being placed at road construction sites to inform commuters that certain projects are being paid for by stimulus money. The signs cost $300 each and in Illinois alone, the state plans to spend $150,000 on them. The signs probably cost more than the potholes on my street, which my local street maintenance authority refuses to fill.
2.Again in Illinois, the state will spend $350,000 to build a four person bunk house at a park located in a county where the median price of a home is $71,000.
3.The National Institutes of Health has given a grant to a professor at the University of Indiana to study how children perceive people with foreign accents. Why?
4.Missouri will spend $500,000 on fish food. Enough said.
5.Yale and the University of Connecticut are receiving $850,000 in stimulus for research “to study how paying attention improves performance of difficult tasks.” You could probably ask a sixth grader about this and get a perfectly reasonable answer that wouldn’t cost you a dime.
6.Again from the National Institutes of Health. They are providing $680,000 to Yale to study how diet and exercise impacts obesity.
7.Memphis, TN will spend $250,000 to renovate a dilapidated Laundromat.
8.Washington, NC is spending stimulus funds to hire a “project funding manager” whose job it will be to request more stimulus funds! Now that’s creative.
9.Tualatin, Oregon plans to spend $2.5 million on a “train-horn-free” zone. Can’t they just throw up a sign (for $300) along the side of the tracks that reads “No horn blowing for the next 25 miles”?
10.And my absolute favorite. A South Dakota fish hatchery will spend $10,000 of a grant on a freezer for fish sperm. I don’t know that any comment I make can add to this item.
Now if you don’t find this upsetting, just consider item number 92 in Coburn’s report (reprinted in its entirely here): “U.S.-Canada border crossings that average less than 2 passenger cars per day and 2-3 trucks a month get millions from stimulus funds. U.S.-Mexico border crossings with 20,000 vehicle crossings per day get nothing. A border post located in Montana sees an average of less than two passenger cars per day and only two to three trucks a month, according to the Bureau of Transportation statistics. Despite the lack of activity, it will receive $15 million in “stimulus” funds for upgrades. Five of the tiny border crossings in Montana will get $77 million in total.”
The White House is denouncing Coburn’s report. No surprise there. They are saying that some of the items contained in it have been dropped from the roster of projects receiving stimulus funds. What is more telling is what they are not saying. And they are not saying that they will pull funding from all of the projects listed.
So while you have to tighten your belt, cancel your family vacation, struggling to put food on your table and keep the roof over your head, you can rest easy with the knowledge that your tax dollars are funding the artificial insemination of fish in South Dakota.
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