In response to this report of $1.4 billion dollars of ARRA funding, that's Stimulus dollars, claiming to create U.S. jobs, instead being funneled offshore to foreign nations, Senators Schumer, Brown, Tester & Casey demand the Obama administration Suspend Stimulus Program Funneling Billions Overseas.
In the wake of a new report revealing that a clean-energy grant program in the stimulus has paid out more than $1 billion to foreign manufacturers, U.S. Senators Charles E. Schumer (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Jon Tester (D-MT) urged the Obama administration Wednesday to suspend the program indefinitely until the law can be fixed so that funds only flow to projects that will create jobs in the United States.
Believe this or not, Whirlpool received Stimulus funds to create jobs and instead they are closing plants! This is obscene that they are being given funds to create jobs and instead offshore outsourcing them. We should demand at least those funds be rescinded.
It can barely get greedier than this: We're in tough economic times, so Whirlpool receives $19 million in taxpayer funds to create jobs. Then it turns around and announces it will shutter its Evansville, Indiana refrigerator plant and displace the 1,100 workers there. Disgusting.
This is disgusting. Since Congress wouldn't back off of the Buy American clauses, weak as they were, in the first stimulus bill (ARRA), the Obama administration is going to destroy those requirements via executive order.
Since Mr. Obama cannot rely on Congress to pass legislation exempting Canada from Buy American provisions, the complicated deal will rely on the President using his executive power to treat sectors of the Canadian economy as American, by claiming supply chains are so integrated they cannot be separated.
Andrew Leonard has a short piece over at Salon titled, Chicago School: Bloodied But Unbowed. It's an interesting little piece full of links to previous articles and statements. It also includes this zinger:
.... some of the Chicago economists don't sound a whole lot different from your typical South Carolina Republican. Here's Sam Peltzman, the Ralph and Dorothy Keller distinguished service professor emeritus of economics (italics mine):
"This experience is going to seal the tomb on socialism for all time," he says. "If this can't bring it back, it's hard to think about what could." A burst of Keynesianism should surprise no one, he argues. Of course we hope the government can step in and save the economy. In a crisis people "become infantilized and go back to what's comforting to you as a child."
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