Economy Alarm: Democrats’ Green Jobs Claims Speared by Government Mismanagement

Democrats’ Green Jobs Claims Speared by Government Mismanagement

Big Surprise: Massive Bureaucracy Still Can’t Handle Taxpayer Money

Speaker Pelosi Spent Taxpayer Dollars to Usher in Stimulus-Backed ‘Green Revolution,’ President Said Immediate Action Was Needed

“Pelosi personally delivered the message from Washington to green industry leaders in San Francisco Saturday. ‘We had the industrial revolution. We had the technological revolution. Now, we have the green revolution,’ she said. It is a revolution backed by stimulus dollars that brings with it green jobs, and lots of them.” (Lisa Amin, “Pelosi Pitches Green Message in San Francisco,” KGO-TV, 3/7/09) 

“What Americans expect from Washington is action that matches the urgency they feel in their daily lives — action that’s swift, bold and wise enough for us to climb out of this crisis. Because each day we wait to begin the work of turning our economy around, more people lose their jobs, their savings and their homes. And if nothing is done, this recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse.” (Barack Obama, “The Action Americans Need,” Washington Post, 2/5/09)

Credibility Crash: Green Jobs Fantasy Yet to Pan Out as Stimulus Mismanagement Runs Rampant

In Baltimore, the 300 block of East 23 1/2 Street is getting patched up in time for winter. One economic stimulus program is paying to insulate 11 rental rowhouses, another is paying for furnaces and a third is covering the cost for reflective roofs to be installed by prison inmates in a job-training program.

The block is part of one of the biggest initiatives ever undertaken by the federal government, a nationwide push to improve the energy efficiency of buildings. But as the national unemployment rate crosses into the double digits and Republicans question the stimulus program’s impact, the work on East 23 1/2 — even with all of its activity — has so far not produced a single job.

Nine months after Congress passed the $787 billion stimulus package, there is little tangible to show for one of its biggest single areas of investment, the $25 billion energy-efficiency effort. That points to one of the central tensions of President Obama’s landmark stimulus package: His goal was to inject money quickly into the economy while at the same time laying the groundwork for his broader, transformational agenda on energy, education and health care. 

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“There have been a lot of bumps in the road . . . and that’s slowed things down substantially,” said Jeff Genzer, counsel to the National Association of State Energy Officials.

The tension between job creation and careful oversight is most evident in the low-income weatherization program. Skeptics warn that the program is vulnerable to fraud, since it will get five times more money than usual and the work is typically overseen by 900 local community action groups scattered around the country, some of which are better managed than others. (Alec MacGillis, “Painting a Street Green Hasn’t Stimulated One New Job,” Washington Post, 11/7/09)

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