Is this a surprise? A government program that is totally screwed up - and just think how it will work out with the government running our health care.
STIMULUS WEATHERIZATION PROGRAM BOGGED DOWN BY RED TAPE
Source: Andrew Malcolm, "Obama's federal government can weatherize your home for only $57,362 each," Los Angeles Times, February 18, 2010.
A $5 billion federal weatherization program intended to save energy and create jobs has done little of either, says the Los Angeles Times.
According to a new report on the one-year anniversary of President Obama's American Reinvestment and Recovery Act: The $5-billion program is so riddled with drafts that so far it's weatherized only about 9,000 homes.
Based on the initial Obama-Biden program promise that it would create 87,000 new jobs its first year, that would be about 10 jobs for each home weatherized so far.
ABC News reports that the General Accountability Office will declare this week that the Energy Department has fallen woefully behind -- about 98.5 percent behind -- the 593,000 homes it initially predicted would be weatherized in the Recovery Act's very first year.
You'll never guess what the federal government blames for the lack of significant progress: Red tape. It seems that the Pelosi-Reid stimulus plan that was so quickly cobbled together and was supposed to immediately pump so much money into the sagging economy last year included an 80-year-old legal provision requiring all federally funded projects to pay a prevailing wage to workers.
But what's a prevailing wage for weatherization, you ask? Who knows? So the Energy Department asked the Labor Department, which set out to calculate what a prevailing weatherization wage is in every single one of the more than 3,000 counties across these United States.
The Energy folks did tell ABC they've so far spent $522 million Recovery Act dollars on the program. This comes to about $57,362 for each home fixed up so far, says the L.A. Times.
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