The Stimulus Is Working!
Good news, friends. The stimulus bill is working just as Obama promised. Thousands of jobs are being created – and not in imaginary zip codes this time. These are real manufacturing jobs. Now, here’s the bad news – the jobs are being created overseas.
Barack Obama has talked a lot about using stimulus dollars to create new “green jobs” or “clean energy jobs.” Last month, the president said, “Building a robust clean energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future — jobs that pay well and can’t be outsourced.” It seems like all the talk about green jobs was just a lot of hot air.
ABC News and other media outlets have reported recently that stimulus money specifically intended to create “green jobs” here has in fact been used to create thousands of jobs overseas. ABC noted that “Nearly $2 billion in money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act has been spent on wind power … over the past year. But the study found that nearly 80% of that money has gone to foreign manufactures of wind turbines.”
According to the report, the largest award – $577 million – went to a Spanish company. One Portuguese company got $230 million of your hard-earned money. Another project that is expected to receive $450 million in taxpayer funded stimulus cash would help build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas. It’s estimated that the project might create about 300 construction jobs. But it would also fund thousands of manufacturing jobs — in China. According to one study, as many as 6,000 stimulus jobs have been created overseas.
By the way, while the Obama Administration is wasting your money creating green jobs in China, Arizona just announced that it would no longer take part in a “groundbreaking attempt to limit greenhouses-gas emissions,” by implementing a regional cap and trade system. Why? It costs too much. State officials determined that the plan was too costly for consumers and businesses and “would slow the state’s economic growth.” But Obama and congressional liberals want to impose such a plan on the entire nation.
Even if the stimulus funds do create so-called green jobs, wind power is terribly expensive. It’s easy to understand Arizona’s decision when you consider the following analysis:
“The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in early 2008 that the government subsidizes solar energy at $24.34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) and wind power at $23.37 per MWh. …Compare the subsidies to renewables with those extended to natural gas (25 cents per MWh in subsidies), coal (44 cents), hydroelectricity (67 cents), and nuclear power ($1.59). These are the energy sources (along with oil, which undergirds transportation) that do the heavy lifting in our energy economy.”
This is just more evidence of the grossly inefficient way government redistributes resources and wastes your tax dollars. Yet Obama and his liberal allies want to run our healthcare, too!
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