Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Republican Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn hold a news conference about stimulus projects at the U.S. Capitol Tuesday in Washington.
WASHINGTON — Republican Sens. John McCain and Tom Coburn trashed the Obama administration’s $862-billion stimulus bill on Tuesday, saying it plunged future generations into unmanageable debt and was filled with waste and fraud.
With the August recess just a few days away, the two senators took a last-minute swing at President Barack Obama by releasing “Summertime Blues: 100 Stimulus Projects that Give Taxpayers the Blues.”
“There’s going to be $50 billion in fraud from this bill,” Coburn, R-Okla., said. “We highlight things that we think are stupid and inappropriate.”
Both lawmakers stressed that the purpose of the bill — and the idea championed by Democrats — was that stimulus money would keep Americans employed. That, in their view, has not been the case.
“The American people are disappointed, but many us are not surprised,” McCain, R-Ariz., said. “[These projects] are unworthy in that they don’t create jobs. The stimulus package was supposed to create jobs. Unemployment was going to be 8 percent — that’s what the president said when they sold this debt to the American people.”
Some of the projects labeled as waste by McCain and Coburn include:
- $308 million for a joint-venture BP power plant that won’t start construction for another 16 months;
- $90,000 to build a sidewalk that leads to a ditch;
- $145,000 to test the effects of cocaine on monkeys;
- $3.8 million for a “streetscaping” project that has reduced traffic and caused a business to fire two employees;
- $16 million to help Boeing to clean up an environmental mess it created in 2007;
- $200,000 to help Siberian communities lobby Russian policy makers;
- $1.8 million for a road project that is threatening a pastor’s home.
Jared Bernstein, Vice President Joe Biden’s top economic adviser, responded to the report in a White House blog post. “Instead of trying to help create the conditions for stronger growth, to help build on the momentum of the Recovery Act, McCain and Coburn spend their valuable time cooking up phony critiques.”
Despite Bernstein’s criticism and the inevitable White House report attempting to discredit this report, Coburn is adamant that Americans were sold a bill of goods.
“When we steal from generations that follow us, we should [not] being doing it in a way that isn’t the most efficient and most effective way,” Coburn said. “Do [these projects] meet the common sense test? Many of them don’t.”