U.S. Senator Tom Coburn, MD, today released an oversight report — “100 Stimulus Projects: A Second Opinion” — that discloses 100 of the worst examples of waste in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, or stimulus bill.
Here are 10 examples in the report:
- 1. $1.5 million in “free” stimulus money for a new wastewater treatment plant results in higher utility costs for residents of Perkins, Oklahoma.
- 2. $1 billion for FutureGen in Mattoon, Illinois, is the “biggest earmark of all time” for a power plant that may never work.
- 3. $15 million for “shovel-ready” repairs to little-used bridges in rural Wisconsin are given priority over widely used bridges that are structurally deficient.
- 4. $800,000 for little-used John Murtha Airport in Johnstown, Pennsylvania airport to repave a back-up runway; the “Airport for Nobody” has already received tens of millions in taxpayer dollars.
- 5. $3.4 million for a wildlife “eco-passage” in Florida to take animals safely under a busy roadway.
- 6. Nevada nonprofit gets $2 million weatherization contract after recently being fired for same type of work.
- 7. $1.15 million for installation of a new guard rail for the non-existent Optima Lake in Oklahoma.
- 8. Nearly $10 million to renovate an abandoned train station that hasn’t been used in 30 years.
- 9. 10,000 dead people get stimulus checks, but the Social Security Administration blames a tough deadline.
- 10. Town of Union, New York, encouraged to spend a $578,000 grant it did not request for a homelessness problem it claims it does not have.
