Sunday, February 8

Senate 'Stimulus' Bill Still Contains $2 Billion Blagojevich Earmark!

National Review posted about this $2 Billion earmark for a project that the Government itself shut down as it turned into a waste a money over time. Shutting the project down was good business, especially considering that the technology it planned to prove was made obsolete by better, and cheaper technology.
It became clear the Department of Energy could not, in good conscience, continue to support the program. The likelihood that it would fail, leaving the American people with hundreds of millions of dollars in sunk cost and none of the benefits, is not acceptable. - Then Secretary of Energy, Samuel W. Bodman, via the National Review
Bad Government is when politicians take a project like this that was shuttered as a bad idea, and force the Government to do it anyway. Worse, Congress is doing this on behalf of a disgraced/criminal politician.
After FutureGen was abandoned, disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich paid Cassidy and Associates, a major Washington, D.C. lobbying firm, $468,000 in public funds to lobby to restart the project. The Illinois delegation in Congress has also been pushing hard for the FutureGen earmark, despite the fact that the Obama administration has been vocal about their opposition to earmarks in the stimulus, and has even specifically said they are opposed to including funding for FutureGen in the bill.

The Wall Street Journal estimates that the FutureGen would generate about 2,675 new jobs—and only 150 of those are permanent. Congress would be spending just shy of $750,000 per new job. - The National Review
Those Senate Republicans who are planning to vote for this bill, should think again because they are approving $2 Billion in Government waste on this one item alone. What kind of line item review did this get? What kind of payoff did these two/three Republican Senators get to keep this item in the bill? Hell, even the President is against funding this project, and yet, there it is in the 'Compromise' Senate Bill.
10 FOSSIL ENERGY RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT

For an additional amount for ‘‘Fossil Energy Re12 search and Development’’, $4,600,000,000, to remain available until September 30, 2010: Provided, That $2,000,000,000 is available for one or more near zero emissions powerplant(s): - Senate Comprimise Bill
The Stimulus is bad. Senators who vote for it should be held accountable for their vote, especially the Republicans who could have stopped this biggest Government bribe to socialists ever. It is a shame that the places of Government that should be filled with our best and brightest are instead filled with idiots, political 'players' and crooks.

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1 comment:

Bluegrass Pundit said...

According to the CBO, the stimulus bill will actually hurt the economy in the long run. However, there is the possibility it will stimulate illegal immigration. In addition to providing up to 300 thousand construction jobs for illegal aliens, the bill will bail out irresponsible states like California. This will allow them to avoid dealing with one of the primary reasons they have a budget deficit. That reason is the extensive and expensive social net they have extended to illegal immigrants. Obama's stimulus will stimulate illegal immigration