Keep these in mind “shovel-ready jobs” promised by the Obama-Biden administration in 2011? After many people failed to show up after the passing of this spending boondoggle was passed, President Obama joked, “Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected.”
It is a law that has been noted Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), cost $787 billion, of which $48 billion was supposed to go for infrastructure. The American Reinvestment and Recovery Act was not the correct name. Martin Feldstein, an economist at Harvard, estimated that for every job created it would cost the taxpayer $200,000. In an interview on September 26, 2011, ABC News asked Martin Feldstein about the statistic. Timothy Geithner is Treasury Secretary did not dispute the figure, saying, “the price tag is the wrong way to measure the bill’s worth.” We’re hearing similar assertions about the new law.
Welcome to “shovel-ready 2.0” and another swindle that has just been perpetrated on us in the name of “infrastructure.” Swindle means “to obtain by fraud or deceit.” The administration and congressional Democrats claim the bill will cost us nothing. That’s because they have used accounting gimmicks and rely on money they hope will come in through tax increases. Won’t that cost something?
It is 2,700 pages in length. It is 2,700 pages long. I bet your house that not a single member of Congress has read the entire thing before they vote on it. It is the Heritage Foundation has dug into the details and revealed items that add to the debt, probably increase already high inflation, and likely boost the cost of essential goods and services.
For starters, says a team of Heritage analysts, “it bails out the Highway Trust Fund to the tune of $118 billion. Overspending causes chronic deficits in the fund. Rather than bring it into balance, senators are whipping out the national credit card, and then pretending they didn’t when it comes to keeping score.” This is throwing good money after bad, since when it comes to government programs failure is never an excuse to spend less money.
The analysts write: “There is a laundry list of tired budget gimmicks, including the sale of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, extending long-standing fees, and spectrum sales. Many of these gimmicks have a history of falling short of expectations.” See last sentence in the previous paragraph.
It was sold to the public as a promise that bridges, roads and airports would be fixed. In fact, note the Heritage analysts, the law “adds as much new spending to modes like mass transit and Amtrak as it does for highways, even though buses and rail account for only a tiny fraction of travel. Even the value of highway funding is hampered by wasteful set-asides: $2 million per year for bee-friendly landscaping, $50 million per year to combat weeds, and expensive mandates that give unionized contractors a leg up on taxpayer-friendly, non-union shops.” If history is a guide, one or more of these set-asides benefit the special interests of members, possibly in exchange for their votes.
It’s an old joke, but true: How do you tell when a politician is lying? His lips will move. Do not be like the others who voted to pass this law. Take the time and read the entire analysis. They will most likely con you into believing they are ripping us off again.
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