More Stimulus Fraud Exposed
Last Updated: Wed, 11/18/2009 - 1:37pm
President Obama’s highly acclaimed stimulus spending transparency has turned out
to be a painful thorn that’s exposed embarrassing falsities the administration
publishes as fact to make the fraud-infested economic recovery plan look
successful.
Weeks after getting busted for drastically inflating the number of jobs created
by the scandal-plagued $787 billion stimulus, the White House is crediting the
controversial spending program with saving or creating numerous jobs in
congressional district that don’t even exist.
The humiliating revelation was exposed this week by a national news outlet that
examined the latest data posted on Obama’s touted (and quite costly at $18
million) government website that claims to allow taxpayers to see precisely what
entities receive stimulus money and how the money is spent. It’s all part of the
administration’s goal of fostering greater accountability and transparency.
It turns out that much of the information is fiction. Misidentified
congressional districts, or districts that simply don’t exist, are listed as
receiving hundreds of millions of recovery dollars and creating a plethora of
jobs. Additionally, U.S. territories such as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands
are falsely reported as creating hundreds of jobs with tens of millions of
dollars in recovery funds.
Several congressional districts that don’t exist in Oklahoma are listed as
utilizing $20 million to create 15 jobs and nonexistent districts in Iowa show
spending $10.6 million to conceive 39 jobs. In Arizona, which has only eight
congressional districts, the fictitious 15th district is listed as saving 30
jobs with $761,420 and a nonexistent Connecticut district (the 42nd) claims to
have generated more than two dozen jobs with zero stimulus dollars.
A powerful Democrat who chairs the House appropriations Committee called the
inaccuracies “outrageous” and “ludicrous” and demanded the data be immediately
corrected. Just a few weeks ago the administration distorted by thousands the
number of recovery-funded jobs in a desperate effort to show that it’s on track
to meet its goal of creating 3.5 million new ones by the end of next year.
Besides blatant fact distortion, fraud and corruption have been pervasive in the
monstrous stimulus program that has so far lost millions to waste, abuse and
highly questionable projects. Many of the details are laid out in scathing U.S.
Senate report (A Second Opinion on the Stimulus) that tracks tens of millions of
dollars in wasteful stimulus projects and predicts that at least $55 billion
will be lost to fraud and abuse by the time all the money is spent.
Birds of a Feather
"Tricks and treachery are the practice of fools, that
don't have brains enough to be honest."
Benjamin Franklin