Stimulus Dollars Disproportionately Went to States Represented by Dems
According to a new report on President Obama’s stimulus package and its effect on the economy, the amount of stimulus money that went to each state was correlated with the number of Democrats in each state’s congressional delegation.
The data is revealed in a new book by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and John R. Lott Jr., a prominent conservative academic.
The book, titled Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, contains this chart showing the correlation:
The book also examines rates of unemployment, poverty, foreclosures and bankruptcies in the various states in late 2008 and early 2009. In all four cases, more grievous economic conditions were negatively correlated with the allocation of stimulus dollars. States with higher unemployment rates, for instance, tended to receive less stimulus money per capita.
The authors draw a damning conclusion: “It’s not the poor, it’s not foreclosures, it’s not bankruptcies, it’s how many Democrats are in your congressional delegation,” Norquist stated at The Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing on Tuesday. “That’s what a trillion dollars of spending was all about: crony corruption.”
“And amazingly,” he added, “that doesn’t make the economy grow.”
Scribe has documented the seemingly political use of taxpayer money by the Obama administration, most recently showing spikes in the awarding of federal grant money while Congress was considering major pieces of the president’s agenda.
The reporting in Debacle fits with a longstanding Washington tradition of the political disbursement of federal dollars – a tradition that the current administration has not only continued, but in many cases expanded, campaign promises of transparency and accountability notwithstanding.
The data is revealed in a new book by Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and John R. Lott Jr., a prominent conservative academic.
The book, titled Debacle: Obama’s War on Jobs and Growth and What We Can Do Now to Regain Our Future, contains this chart showing the correlation:
The book also examines rates of unemployment, poverty, foreclosures and bankruptcies in the various states in late 2008 and early 2009. In all four cases, more grievous economic conditions were negatively correlated with the allocation of stimulus dollars. States with higher unemployment rates, for instance, tended to receive less stimulus money per capita.
The authors draw a damning conclusion: “It’s not the poor, it’s not foreclosures, it’s not bankruptcies, it’s how many Democrats are in your congressional delegation,” Norquist stated at The Heritage Foundation’s Bloggers Briefing on Tuesday. “That’s what a trillion dollars of spending was all about: crony corruption.”
“And amazingly,” he added, “that doesn’t make the economy grow.”
Scribe has documented the seemingly political use of taxpayer money by the Obama administration, most recently showing spikes in the awarding of federal grant money while Congress was considering major pieces of the president’s agenda.
The reporting in Debacle fits with a longstanding Washington tradition of the political disbursement of federal dollars – a tradition that the current administration has not only continued, but in many cases expanded, campaign promises of transparency and accountability notwithstanding.
This is my shocked face.....
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