Corpulent Anniversary
A year ago this week, President Barack Obama put his stamp of approval on the massive $787-billion stimulus bill. To date, about the only thing it’s managed to stimulate is itself, with an official cost estimate ballooning to $862 billion.
Meanwhile, some 3 million Americans have lost their jobs and the national unemployment rate, which stood at about 7.6 percent when Obama signed the bill and promised it would prevent unemployment from topping 8 percent, hovers near 10 percent.
Failing miserably on the job-creation front, the bill does deserve at least some credit. Where would we be, after all, without free water-taxi rides to help relieve congestion in Maryland ($1.6 million); a new water pipeline feeding a golf course in California ($2.2 million); research to develop supersonic corporate jets ($4.7 million) and a Broadband Map that likely will be obsolete by the time it’s completed ($350 million).
And talk about a bridge to nowhere, right here in North Carolina the stimulus bill has failed miserably at helping the aging Yadkin River Bridge that actually would go somewhere. North Carolina got all of $10 million to help replace the bridge that the federal government tagged “structurally deficient”. The bridge replacement, with a price tag of $180 million, is part of a larger $330-million project that includes widening I-85.
Always looking for a silver lining, there is some good news. Charlotte’s woefully misguided ask of $300 million to pay for the money-pit-in-waiting North Corridor commuter rail line received a giant goose egg from the Feds.
Happy Porkulus Anniversary, folks.
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