Maybe these jobs are being saved or created in states #51-57?
Here’s a stimulus success story: In Arizona’s 15th congressional district, 30 jobs have been saved or created with just $761,420 in federal stimulus spending. At least that’s what the Web site set up by the Obama administration to track the $787 billion stimulus says.
There’s one problem, though: There is no 15th congressional district in Arizona; the state has only eight districts.
And ABC News has found many more entries for projects like this in places that are incorrectly identified.
Late Monday, officials with the Recovery Board created to track the stimulus spending, said the mistakes in crediting nonexistent congressional districts were caused by human error.
“We report what the recipients submit to us,” said Ed Pound, Communications Director for the Board.
Pound told ABC News the board receives declarations from the recipients – state governments, federal agencies and universities – of stimulus money about what program is being funded.
“Some recipients clearly don’t know what congressional district they live in, so they appear to be just throwing in any number. We expected all along that recipients would make mistakes on their congressional districts, on jobs numbers, on award amounts, and so on. Human beings make mistakes,” Pound said.
Uh huh.
You’re telling me that people at universities and at government offices that make their living at pumping their federal Congressman for funds suddenly forget the congressional district they live in? And what’s more, are telling federal regulators that they’re in districts that don’t even exist?
I find it hard to believe that this is purely accidental, over and over and over again. Rather, I think what is going on is that these folks know they have to tell the Obama people something to make them happy so they can stick it on a website and make it look like Obama’s stimulus is doing something besides selling our grandchildren into debt slavery. They probably figure that since, hey, they’re the Obama administration, and since Obama is so very popular (well, not really, actually only 49% approve of his performance, while 51% disapprove), nobody would bother to factcheck their recovery website.
That, or the Obama administration and its cronies have a more serious competency problem than I had thought.
Tags: government, obama, stimulus
