Republicans List 100 Wasteful Stimulus Spending Projects

Two Republican senators on Tuesday gave 100 reasons why President Barack Obama’s $862 billion economic stimulus law had not, and would not, work.

The reasons given by senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and John McCain of Arizona, came in the form of a detailed list of wasteful projects that did not have the goal of creating new jobs as its primary objective.

“If we’re going to have stimulus bills, it ought to be truly about stimulating the economy, it ought to be creating real jobs and it ought to be … giving us the best bang for our buck,” said Coburn.

The list of mainly silly or just wasteful ideas got good play in the mainstream media as well as in the cable news stations and in conservative talk radio.

Coburn described the list that he and McCain had put together as “things we think are stupid and inappropriate.”

Among the projects mentioned in the list were:

· Number 38 on the Coburn-McCain list of “100 stimulus projects that give taxpayers the blues” is a North Carolina project they said spent $294,958 for “reducing menopausal hot flashes through yoga.”

· In Coburn’s home state of Oklahoma, a small town received $89,298 “to replace a quarter-mile stretch of sidewalk that was replaced only five years ago,” the senators said. That sidewalk, they said, “led to a ditch” in a town where the public school faces funding problems.

· Restoration of Fort Jefferson at Dry Tortugas National Park. “Located 70 miles off shore, the park is almost entirely underwater and accessible only by airplane, private boat or ferry. Despite its remote location, the park will get $13,304,484 in repairs for its main above-water attraction, Fort Jefferson.”

· Researchers at Florida International University received nearly $60,000 to document and provide statistical analysis regarding the rise of colonial lawsuits in the Spanish Empire.

· Highlands County Commission got $1.1 million to install a fiber-optic cable so 14 traffic lights are better coordinated, thus reducing fuel emissions from vehicles on the road.

· Jupiter Inlet National Historic Lighthouse will get $442,000 for interior painting and restoration of a small building next door to the lighthouse that was formerly used as a workshop and Coast Guard housing.

The most impressive aspect of the list provided by the two senators was that newspapers throughout the country picked from it projects in its area of circulation and published them.

For instance, the first paragraph of the North Carolina NewsObserver story said: “Stoned monkeys, menopausal yogis, video-gaming retirees and insect trading cards are among the eight stimulus-funded projects in North Carolina that made a list of 100 questionable projects paid for by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.”

In addition to listing the projects in Texas that made the list, The Houston Chronicle published the “top 10″ most wasteful projects in the stimulus bill, as revealed by Sens. Coburn and McCain.

The list, in order, includes: 1. Replacement windows for a shuttered visitor center at Mount St. Helens, Ore.; 2. The University of North Carolina at Charlotte’s computerized dance-choreography program; 3. Pittsburgh’s North Shore Connector light rail project; 4. The two fire stations in San Antonio; 5. A plan to convert an abandoned train station into a museum in Glassboro, N.J.; 6. The California Academy of Sciences’ project to photograph ants.; 7. An Ohio road project; 8. Refurbishing the Fitchburg Furnace building in Fitchburg, Ky.; 9. A power plant in Kern County, Calif.; and 10. A sidewalk in Boynton, Okla.

In turn, wire service agencies and cable news organizations wrote about some of these projects in detail. Among the most ridiculous were: the $2 million given to the California Academy of Sciences to send researchers to islands in the Indian Ocean and to east Africa to capture, photograph and analyze thousands of exotic ants.

Reuters also added the $1.8 million given for an Ohio road project the senators say threatens two dozen homes next to it; and the $357,710 to repair the stonework and structure of the Fitchburg Furnace in Kentucky. The furnace was in service for five years and sat unused for 140 years. This comes after the federal government provided $661,00 to restore the furnace in 2004 with much of it was lost due to bad stewardship of the money, the senators say, citing the current treasurer of Friends of Fitchburg.

Unlike many Republicans who savage the Democrats’ economic stimulus, Coburn and McCain opened their media conference Tuesday saying, “There is no question the stimulus bill has had a positive effect on the economy to a certain degree.”

But they said the problem was that the money could have been better targeted toward job creation.

One thing is certain. The list the two senators provided got the nationwide display it deserved.

You can access the full report here.

The Americano/Agencies