We already know how astoundingly well President Obama’s $75 billion mortgage plan is working (so well, it seems, that he’s decided to bless us with another plan), but what about that $787 billion “stimulus” package? Yes, its price tag has already ballooned by $75 billion, and yes, it has failed to deliver the unemployment-stifling benefits its advocates repeatedly promised. But the president had an ace up his sleeve all along: weatherization projects. He’s talked up this effort, making it a centerpiece of his rhetoric on reversing unemployment. Jon Stewart wasn’t convinced in December, and as it happens, reality has sided with Stewart:
After a year of crippling delays, President Barack Obama’s $5 billion program to install weather-tight windows and doors has retrofitted a fraction of homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected.
In Indiana, state-trained workers flubbed insulation jobs. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, the program has yet to produce a single job or retrofit one home. And in California, a state with nearly 37 million residents, the program at last count had created 84 jobs.
The program was a hallmark of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, a way to shore up the economy while encouraging people to conserve energy at home. But government rules about how to run what was deemed to be a ‘’shovel-ready” project, including how much to pay contractors and how to protect historic homes during renovations, have thwarted chances at early success, according to an Associated Press review of the program…
How ineffective has this big-government solution proven to be?
…But after a year, the stimulus program has retrofitted 30,250 homes — about 5 percent of the overall goal — and fallen well short of the 87,000 jobs that the department planned, according to the latest available figures.
As the Obama administration promotes a second home energy-savings program — a $6 billion rebate plan — some experts are asking whether that will pay off for homeowners or for the planet.
At this point, who can seriously argue the “stimulus” has been anything other than a wasteful debacle? Congressional Democrats, that’s who. They’re bringing home lots of stimulus bacon — almost twice as much as their Republican colleagues. Coincidence? Hmmm.