President Obama has announced that it is releasing half a billion dollars in money for construction of transportation projects around the country. That does not sound like much until you learn the details. The funds in question were appropriated by Congress during the Bush Administration, specifically during 2003 to 2006. Each appropriation contained a proviso that allowed any unspent funds from the appropriation to be designated by the Secretary of Transportation to be used for any other surface transportation project. Let's be clear what that means. By the time that Obama took office, almost all this money was sitting unspent in the accounts of the Transportation Department. All that was needed to put the funds to work so that projects could get built and people could get back to work was authorization from Obama. Now, almost four years later, Obama has finally gotten around to issuing that authorization.
It is worth noting that for months, Obama has been blasting Congress for not passing his plan to spend more on infrastructure projects, something that would boost employment in the construction field. All the time he was complaining about Congressional inaction, Obama was sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars himself. Of course, as usual, Obama was too busy campaigning to actually do his job.
Obama has got to go!
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