Obama Team Holding up Stimulus Spending until 2010 Election Year

Sharpening their attacks on one of President Obama’s early legislative successes, Republican lawmakers have begun charging that the stimulus spending bill is being used not to create jobs and lift the struggling economy, as Obama claimed, but to advance the political fortunes of the Democratic Party.

Republican members of congressional committees that oversee the stimulus are touting a lengthy list of line items from the nearly $800 billion spending bill that have received little to no funding in the measure’s first ten months of existence. And with roughly half of the expenditures slated to occur during fiscal year 2010, which runs from October 1 of this year through next September 30, the Republicans allege the spending is structured and timed to help Democrats in the rough political climate of the 2010 midterm elections.

“We were told in January we had to pass this massive $787 billion stimulus program in a hurry, so that the money could get out of town for shovel-ready job-creating projects,” said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga., a member of the House Appropriations Committee. "And yet with only 12 percent (of the stimulus funds having been spent), we've got to ask ourselves: Is the administration – run by the politicals, David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel – sitting on the money on purpose, so they can trickle it out in 2010, the election year?”

Republicans on the Appropriations Committee have disseminated figures, covering Fiscal Year 2009, to demonstrate the slowness with which stimulus funding is being doled out . An analysis by the committee’s minority staff noted, for example, that of the nearly $6 billion authorized in the stimulus package for energy efficiency measures, only $3 million – less than one percent of the authorization – had been spent. For “smart grid” projects, which employ digital technology to regulate the use of energy-consuming appliances in private homes, none of the $4.5 billion authorized had been spent. And for weatherization initiatives, $174 million of the total $5 billion authorized, or some three percent, had been spent.

“The Pentagon spends money rapidly, FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] spends money rapidly,” said Kingston. “We have had models where the bureaucracy can actually get the money out of town. And yet on this one – which, again, was passed in this great fervor of urgency – the money is still here in Washington, D.C.

“The bureaucracy is sitting on the money. And I don’t even think they're that incompetent, that it's been slowed because of the bureaucracy. I think it’s going to be drummed out during the election year.” - Fox News Story