do you expect any help from the stimulus

A Little PORK

THE STIMULUS IS A STEP TOWARDS A SOVIET AMERICA
Written by Senator Tom Coburn   Tuesday, 10 February 2009

[Senator Coburn recently gave this speech on the floor> of
the Senate We are going in exactly the wrong direction. We ought
to be standing on the principles that made this country great.

There ought to be a review of every program in the
Federal Government that is not effective, that is not
efficient, that is wasteful or fraudulent, and we ought to get
rid of it right now. We ought to say, Gone, to be able to pay
for a real stimulus plan that might, in fact, have some impact.

I would be remiss if I didn't remind everybody
that next week we are going to hear from the Obama
administration wanting another $500 billion. Outside of this
["stimulus" bill], they are going to want another
$500 billion to handle the banking system.

I want to make sure the American people know what is
in this Stimulus bill. I think once they know what is in
this bill, they are going to reject it out of hand. Let me
read for my colleagues some of the things that are in this
bill.

The biggest earmark in history is in this bill. There
is $2 billion in this bill to build a coal plant with zero
emissions. That would be great, maybe, if we had the
technology, but the greatest brains in the world
sitting at MIT say we don't have the technology yet to do
that.

Why would we build a $2 billion powerplant we
don't have the technology for that we know will come back
and ask for another $2 billion and another $2 billion and
another $2 billion when we could build a demonstration project
that might cost $150 million or $200 million? There is
nothing wrong with having coal-fired plants that don't
produce pollution; I am not against that. Even the Washington
Post said the technology isn't there. It is a boondoggle. Why
would we do that?

We eliminated tonight a $246 million payback for the
large movie studios in Hollywood.

We are going to spend $88 million to study whether we
ought to buy a new ice breaker for the Coast Guard. You know
what. The Coast Guard needs a new ice breaker. Why do we
need to spend $88 million? They have two ice breakers now that
they could retrofit and fix and come up with equivalent to
what they needed to and not spend the $1 billion they are
going to come back and ask for, for another ice breaker, so
why would we spend $88 million doing that?

We are going to spend $448 million to build the
Department of Homeland Security a new building. We have $1.3
trillion worth of empty buildings right now, and because it has
been blocked in Congress we can't sell them, we can't
raze them, we can't do anything, but we are going to
spend money on a new building here in Washington.

We are going to spend another $248 million for new
furniture for that building; a quarter of a billion dollars
for new furniture. What about the furniture the Department
of Homeland Security has now? These are tough times.
Should we be buying new furniture? How about using what we
have? That is what a family would do. They would use what
they have. They wouldn't go out and spend $248 million
on furniture.

How about buying $600 million worth of hybrid vehicles? Do
you know what I would say? Right now times are tough;
I would rather Americans have new cars than Federal
employees have new cars. What is wrong with the cars we have?
Dumping $600 million worth of used vehicles on the used
vehicle market right now is one of the worst things we could
do. Instead, we are going to spend $600 million buying new
cars for Federal employees.

There is $400 million in here to prevent STDs. I have
a lot of experience on that. I have delivered 4,000 babies.
We don't need to spend $400 million on STDs. What we
need to do is properly educate about the infection rates
and the effectiveness of methods of prevention. That
doesn't take a penny more. You can write that on one piece of
paper and teach every kid in this country, but we don't
need to spend $400 million on it. It is not a priority.

How about $150 million for a Smithsonian museum? Tell
me how that helps get us out of a recession. Tell me how
that is a priority. Would the average American think that
is a priority that we ought to be mortgaging our kids'
future to spend another $150 million at the Smithsonian?

How about $1 billion for the 2010 census? So everybody
knows, the census is so poorly managed that the census
in 2010 is going to cost twice what it cost 10 years ago,
and we wasted $800 million on a contract because it was
no-bid that didn't perform. Nobody got fired, no competitive
bidding, and we blew $800 million.

We have $75 million for smoking cessation activities,
which probably is a great idea, but we just passed a bill,
the SCHIP bill, that we need to get 21 million more
Americans smoking to be able to pay for that bill. That
doesn't make sense.

How about $200 million for public computer centers at
community colleges? I mean, did we talk with Dell and
Hewlett-Packard and say, How do we make you all do
better? Is there not a market force that could make that
better? Will we actually buy on a true competitive bid?

No, because there is nothing that requires competitive
bidding in anything in this bill. There is nothing
that requires it. It is one of the things President Obama
said he was going to mandate at the Federal Government, but
there is no competitive bidding in this bill at all.

We have $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.
Well, that will put 10 or 15 people to work. Is that a
priority for us right now?

There is $6 billion to turn Federal buildings into
green buildings. That is a priority, versus somebody getting
a job outside of Washington, a job that actually produces
something, that actually increases wealth?

How about $500 million for State and local fire stations?
Where do you find in the Constitution us paying for
local fire stations within our realm of prerogatives? None
of it is competitively bid.

Next is $1.2 billion for youth activities. Who does
that employ? What does that mean?

How about $88 million for renovating the public health
service building? You know, if we could sell half of
the $1.3 trillion worth of properties we have, we could
take care of every Federal building requirement and backlog
we have.

Then there's $412 million for CDC [Centers for
disease Control] buildings and property. We spent billions on
a new center and headquarters for CDC. Is that a priority?
If we are going to spend $412 million on building buildings,
let's build one that will produce something, one
that will give us something.

How about $850 million for that most
"efficient'' Amtrak that hasn't made any money since 1976 and
continues to have $2 billion or $3 billion a year in
subsidies?

Here is one of my favorites: $75 million to construct
a new "security training'' facility for State
Department security officers.  We already have four other
facilities already available to train them. But they want theirs.
By the way, it is going to be in West Virginia. I wonder
how that got there.

So we are going to build a new training facility that
duplicates four others that we already have that could
easily do what we need to do. But because we have a
stimulus package, we are going to add in oink pork.

How about $200 million in funding for a lease - not
buying, but a lease - of alternative energy vehicles on
military installations?

We are going to bail out the States on Medicaid. Total
all of the health programs in this, and we are going to
transfer $150 billion out of the private sector and we are
going to move it to the Federal Government. You talk about
backdooring national health care.

Henry Waxman has to be smiling big today. He wants a
single-payer Government-run health care system. We are
going to move another $150 billion to the Federal Government
from the private sector.

We are going to eliminate fees on loans from the Small
Business Administration. You know what that does? That
pushes productive capital to unproductive projects. It
is exactly the wrong thing to do.

We are going to spend $524 million for information
technology upgrades that the Appropriations Committee
claims will create 388 jobs. If you do the math on that, that
is $1.5 million a job. Don't you love the efficiency
of Washington thinking?

We are going to create $79 billion in additional money
for the States, a "slush fund,'' to bail out
States and provide millions of dollars for education costs. How
many of you think that will ever go away?

Once the State education programs get $79 billion over
2 years, do you think that will ever go away? The cry
and hue of taking "our money" away, even though it
was a stimulus and supposed to be limited, it will never go
away. So we will continue putting that forward until our
kids have grandkids of their own.

There is about $47 billion for a variety of energy
programs that are primarily focused on renewable energy. I am
fine with spending that. But we ought to get something for
it. There ought to be metrics. There are no metrics. It is
pie in the sky, saying we will throw some money at it.

Let me conclude by saying we are at a seminal moment
in our country. We will either start living within the confines of
realism and responsibility or we will blow it and we will
create the downfall of the greatest nation that ever lived.

This bill is the start of that downfall. To abandon a
market-oriented society and transfer it to a
Soviet-style, government-centered, bureaucratic-run and mandated
program, that is the thing that will put the stake in the heart
of freedom in this country.

I hope the American people know what is in this bill.
I am doing everything I can to make sure they know. But
more important, I hope somebody is listening who will treat
the "pneumonia'' we are faced with today, which
is the housing and mortgage markets. It doesn't matter
how much money we spend in this bill. It is doomed to failure
unless we fix that problem first.

Failing that, we will go down in history as the
Congress that undermined the future and vitality of this
country. Let it not be so.