When Congress passed the $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act in 2009, otherwise known as the stimulus bill, it passed with assurances that it would stem the loss of American jobs and keep the economy from floundering. Almost three years since the law’s passage, millions of jobs are still gone and the economy is as uncertain as ever. (1) The only thing getting a boost is our national debt—the stimulus has helped push it over 23 percent higher, to $14.3 trillion, a new record.
The dramatic increase in government spending has not shortened the nation’s unemployment lines. The unemployment rate in June 2010 was 9.5 percent, which is essentially the same as June 2009. In June of this year it was 9.2 percent.
Even President Obama joked in June 2011 that the stimulus bill, aimed at creating jobs with ‘shovel ready’ projects, ‘was not as shovel ready as we expected.’ The stimulus was intended to keep the national jobless rate from exceeding 8 percent, but as the numbers show, that has not happened. (2)
As might be expected from so massive a program, money has been spent on frivolous and unnecessary projects. Senators John McCain and Tom Coburn have confirmed this with a report entitled Summertime Blues which catalogs our misspent tax dollars in painful detail. (1)
They provide a list of ‘100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues.’ Some projects accomplish such questionable goals as putting in new windows at a vacant government building, replacing a new sidewalk with an even newer one, or money for a park that is only accessible by boat or plane.
Here are some examples:
Despite having no plans to reopen a shuttered visitor center at Mount St. Helens in Washington State, the US Forest Service is spending more than $554,000 to replace its windows. One government official likened it ‘to keeping a vacant house in good repair,’ while another official noted that there is hope to find some purpose for the building in the future, whether as a hotel, science camp or restaurant. Despite all this, there are no current plans to use the empty space.
People around Boynton, Oklahoma, were left scratching their heads after the town was awarded nearly $90,000 to replace a quarter-mile stretch of sidewalk that was replaced only five years ago. One resident, Mike Lance, noted that ‘the best indication of the absurdity of the project is what the contractor did with a section of the sidewalk at the north end of town—one that fronts no homes or businesses, and leads directly into a ditch.’ Officials with Oklahoma Transportation defended the project as necessary to bring the sidewalk into conformity with federal guidelines. Meanwhile many local residents have focused on a more pressing financial problem—namely the possible shuttering of Boynton-Moton Public School, which educates 97 prekindergarten through 12th grade students. As an illustration of just how strapped for cash the school system has become, Superintendent Dr. Shelbie Williams has been struggling to scrape together just $9,300 to pay the schools’ gas and electric bills.
Four states plan to spend nearly $2.6 million to plant trees in urban areas as part of an effort to help the green economy. In Nevada, the US Forest Service awarded $490,000 to the Nevada Division of Forestry to make 2,500 trees available for free to organizations willing to plant them, as well as to provide landscape management classes for the green industry workforce in the Las Vegas Valley area. Local Las Vegas assemblyman John Hambrick was not impressed with the project saying, “It certainly doesn’t sound like it’s creating jobs, or has a direct benefit to the unemployment rate, or the needs of the citizens of southern Nevada.” South Carolina and Pennsylvania were awarded $897,000 and $300,000 respectively to plant trees. And, in Georgia, a nearly $900,000 was granted to the Georgia Forestry Commission to provide, among other benefits, ‘more shade.’(1)
The Nevada tree-planting program averaged at $290,697 per ‘job’ created. “Averaging out the stimulus project, it created or ‘saved’ jobs at about $393,500 per temporary position filled. ‘Green jobs’ in the same package cost about $355,555 each. And, Solyndra (government subsidized solar power cost $479,000 for each job). In Europe, anywhere from 2.2 to 4.8 jobs were lost per temp position created. (3)
Solyndra’s $535 million failure was not an unlucky one-off. Numbers cited by Investor’s Business Daily in August, noted the Recovery Act’s $7.2 billion in ‘clean tech’ money had ‘created or retained’ a pathetic 7,140 jobs at a cost of about $1 million each. (4)
There is no question job creation should be a national priority, but torrential misdirected government spending is not the way to do it.
References:
Tom Coburn and John McCain, “Summertime Blues,” August 2010
Sean Whaley, “Stimulus projects plant trees, not jobs,” Nevada News Bureau, August 8, 2011
D. Bray Nelson, “$490,000 green stimulus grant produced 1.72 jobs,” Environment & Climate News, 14, 15, November 2011
Matt Welch, “Creation Myth,” Reason Magazine, November 2011
Jack Dini is author of Challenging Environmental Mythology. He has also written for American Council on Science and Health, Environment & Climate News, and Hawaii Reporter.
