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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Even the Times agrees

From a column in the New York Times: "Last year’s big stimulus bill included $2.3 billion for promising clean energy projects. To qualify for the money, companies had put up 70 percent of a project’s cost, in exchange for a tax credit equal to 30 percent. The idea — just as with cash for clunkers — was to use a relatively small amount of government spending to spur much more private spending.

The program turned out to be quite popular. The Energy Department received requests for more than $10 billion in credits and judged about $8 billion to be worthy. But it had only $2.3 billion to spend, so most qualified applicants got nothing."

These are expenditures that are truly stimulative. New energy project create jobs while construction takes place and then they provide energy and more jobs once completed. So what percentage of the stimulus funds went to such projects? Less than 3% is the answer. What percentage of stimulus funds went to underwrite pay and benefit increases for state workers? Over 20% is the shameful answer. The Obamacrats put the funds into non-stimulative items and now people wonder why there are no new jobs appearing.

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