Finally taking a break from petty bickering, over-regulation and wasteful spending, it appears some congressional leaders decided to start performing their elected duties.
After much skepticism of the stimulus distribution, Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK) decided to test the transparency promised by the Obama administration. He has used his oversight powers to find out exactly where the stimulus money is going, and not surprisingly, he has found over 100 wasteful projects.
Among them is a tunnel being built under a highway in Florida. The 3.5 million dollar project is meant to make a safe passage for turtles to cross the highway. Although we believe turtles are interesting creatures, that money would be far better spent going to local schools or small businesses.
Another project is for the repair of 37 bridges in Wisconsin. Road repairs are important, but, as the Wall Street Journal reported, these bridges receive very little traffic, while a bridge that is in very poor shape and receives a consistent flow of traffic is not receiving any money for repairs.
These are both examples of bloated government making poor choices about the distribution of the stimulus. It harkens back to a previous post about 2/3 of state stimulus money being used for existing government programs, such as unemployment, rather than for creating the new private sector jobs it was meant for. With all the growing difficulties in today’s economic environment, we need much more careful and frugal spending on Capitol Hill.
There are still many problems with the stimulus and the current government spending, but kudos to Senator Coburn, it is nice to see the government working for the people.
Comments