What GOP Leaders deem wasteful in Senate stimulus bill

[Moby]

Terrible spending money on fire stations, waste management, clean coal, the FBI and so many frivolous things. :disbelief:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/02/gop.stimulus.worries/index.html?a

(CNN) -- On Monday, Congressional Republican leaders put out a list of what they call wasteful provisions in the Senate version of the nearly $900 billion stimulus bill that is being debated:

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.

[Smurf-Herder]

None of those things are a fundamental emergency stimulus to kick-start the economy.

And what's with "$75 million for FBI salaries"?

Are those bonuses, or isn't their pay part of a regular budget?

Look at your list. It's a Christmas wish-list, mostly of things for the government, that should be in the regular budget.

[Mr. Blue]

Should it be called a stimulus bill though? The proportion and scope of the bill goes beyond stimulating the economy...projects that probably would have gotten funding in other bills kind of just got thrown in with this stimulus package. To me that makes it a harder sell and I don't really think this spending is going to do much long term.

[Smurf-Herder]

What Is Congress Stimulating?
What's most striking is how much "stimulus" money will be spent on the government itself

Contrary to conventional Beltway wisdom, the House Republicans' zero votes for the Obama presidency's stimulus "package" is looking like the luckiest thing to happen to the GOP's political fortunes since Ronald Reagan switched parties. If the GOP line holds, the party could win back much of the goodwill it dissipated with its big-government adventures the past eight years.

For starters, notwithstanding the new president's high approval rating, his stimulus bill (ghost-written by Nancy Pelosi) has been losing altitude with public opinion by the day. People are nervous.

Then after Tim Geithner scampered through the tax minefield and into a Cabinet seat, the Daschle tax bomb went off, laying open for public view the world of Washington's pay-for-favors that makes the average Wall Street banker look like Little Bo-Peep.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Republican refuseniks shot themselves in the foot by staying off the House stimulus package. Real wisdom holds that congressional Republicans should consider putting distance between themselves and anything Democratic just now. The party's crypts are opening.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, with an apparently recession-proof cash hoard, is running radio ads against 28 House Republicans. The theme of the ads is "Putting Families First."

Families first? The only family standing at the front of the stimulus pay line is the federal family. Read the bill.

Check your PC's virus program, then pull down the nearly 700 pages of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. Dive into its dank waters and what is most striking is how much "stimulus" money is being spent on the government's own infrastructure. This bill isn't economic stimulus. It's self-stimulus.

(All sums here include the disorienting zeros, as in the bill.)

Title VI, Financial Services and General Government, says that "not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be used for construction, repair, and alteration of Federal buildings." There's enough money there to name a building after every Member of Congress.

The Bureau of Land Management gets $325,000,000 to spend fixing federal land, including "trail repair" and "remediation of abandoned mines or well sites," no doubt left over from the 19th-century land rush.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are getting $462,000,000 for "equipment, construction, and renovation of facilities, including necessary repairs and improvements to leased laboratories."

The National Institute of Standards gets $357,000,000 for the "construction of research facilities." The Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration gets $427,000,000 for that. The country is in an economic meltdown and the federal government is redecorating.

The FBI gets $75,000,000 for "salaries and expenses." Inside the $6,200,000,000 Weatherization Assistance Program one finds "expenses" of $500,000,000. How many bureaucrats does it take to "expense" a half-billion dollars?

The current, Senate-amended version now lists "an additional amount to be deposited in the Federal Buildings Fund, $9,048,000,000." Of this, "not less than $6,000,000,000 shall be available for measures necessary to convert GSA facilities to High-Performance Green Buildings." High performance?

Sen. Tom Coburn is threatening to read the bill on the floor of the Senate. I have a better idea: Read it on "Saturday Night Live."

Such as the amendment to Section 2(3)(F) of the Longshore and Harbor Workers' Compensation Act, which will permit payments to guys employed to repair "recreational vessels." Under Incentives for New Jobs, we find a credit to employ what the bill calls "disconnected youths," defined as "not readily employable by reason of lacking a sufficient number of basic skills."

President Obama is saying the bill will "create or save" three million new jobs. The bad news is your new boss is Uncle Sam.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell says, "Everybody agrees that there ought to be a stimulus package. The question is: How big and what do we spend it on?"

Sen. McConnell should reconsider. He knows that the Bush-GOP spending spree cost them control of Congress in 2006. Thus, "How big?" is not the question his party's constituents (or horrified independents) want answered. This is a chance for the GOP to climb down from its big-government dunce chair. Until that reversal is achieved, there is no hope for this party.

I think that behind the bill's sinking public support is the sense that it won't work and its cost is dangerous. The bill's design, an embarrassment to Rube Goldberg, is flawed. Even were one to grant the Keynesians their argument, this is a very mushy, weak-form stimulus.

Rather than try to "reform" it, which won't happen, Sen. McConnell should ask President Obama to pull it and start over. One guesses that privately the president's economic team would thank the senator. If he won't pull it, the Senate Republicans should walk away from it. This bill is a bomb. It may wreck more than it saves.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123379617394050229.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

[SeedyROM]

Sirmoby you are losing it, you can't differentiate between wants and needs no better than you can admit the Bill is chocked full of wasteful spending that should come in separate Bills later on as needed if ever needed. The terrible waste is explained, 2 thirds of this plan is waste that will not benefit Americans nor the economy. The economy is more important the Obama, Reid, Pelos and Rambo's desires to ram everything into one Bill while FEARMONGERING and Whining like this Bill is worthy of funding.

Dipshit dems want every pet project funded, what they need is an education as to what will stimulate growth versus raping the taxpayers wealth!! Wants are things the country and the greedy can live without, needs are things we can't live without. It's so simple, these crooked politicians want to eat steak and lobster while some Amercians struggle to get buy.

The updated list is WASTE!!!! I just reduced the budget, maybe I should submit this updated Bill and ask for $3 million in consulting fees!!!

All the crap below must be cut from the Pork Plan.

TARP stands for Taxpayer Anal Rape Program

• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.
(Pork waste in a crooked state, audit the program first, then shut it down unless they can make it work)

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.
(Fuck Hollywood, do we owe them a damn thing, seriously fuck Hollywood!!! Are they going to reduce salaries or movie ticket prices or the price of popcorn??? Producers can buy thier own film, especially Al Gore and Micheal Moore!!)

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.
(Already funded and taken care of, if you bought a tv made after 2005 or have a convert box you'r good to go. Got an antenna, go buy a digital antenna)

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.
(What is wrong with the current HQ?? Are dems still interested in closing down the HS???)

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.
(Move the old furniture dummies, we know its not old!!!)

• $125 million for the Washington sewer system.
(Let DC become a state and they can fix it themselves, the DC sewer rats will be thankful too)

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.
(305 million people and somehow the costs have just exploded upward overnight, oh my, please explain Madam Pelosi)

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."
(Total waste, smokers will quit when the put down the pack or when a good cure comes along)

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.
(Paid Volunteers, liberals are so stupid, the defininiton of volunteer means they work FOR FREE, jeese! No Money!!!)

• $850 million for Amtrak.
( Amtrak is a money pit on wheels, the solution is so simple that even Pelosi should be able to figure it out! Take the trains off the grid and replace the trains with diesel locomotives that produce thier own electricity========= instantly profitable in less than one year, woweeeeeeeeeee!!!!!) All those norteast corridor trains waste electricity.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.
(Order the EPa to ban lead based paint by 2010 or companies will face fines! fyi, most lead based paint is off the market voluntary thanks to men like Ralph Nader! No money for a scam that will no doubt embarass Obama!!)

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.
(What is wrong with State Dept offices training at the current locations, clearly they need to be trained by the same people who train other agencies. They don't need a SD only facility. Enlarge the current facilty if needed, don't create more waste and bigger govt.)

[SeedyROM]

Sirmoby, please make a donation to help women???

Its tax deductible and you'll feel good about giving to
a noble cause!!;)

https://secure.donationreport.com/donation.html?key=NMRNAWA6ZLCH

[SeedyROM]

So I take we are in agreement that the above is wasteful pork spending?

[SeedyROM]

LOL, what a joke, duck, run and hide, LOL