CAGW on Stimulus Spending: Biggest Snow Job Ever!
Group Announces New Website

(Washington, D.C.) – The nation’s premier taxpayer watchdog group Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) today marked the one-year anniversary of the Obama administration’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), popularly known as the “stimulus” package, by announcing a new website, mywastedtaxdollars.org, that will bring new scrutiny to stimulus spending and demonstrate why a “stimulus II” plan would waste even more taxpayer dollars.

“Today President Obama and his phalanx of spinmeisters are fanning out across the country to preen over the great achievements of the ‘stimulus package,’ which is akin to painting lipstick on a $787 billion pig,” said CAGW President Tom Schatz.  “The President promised that 90 percent of the jobs created would be in the private sector and that unemployment would drop to 8 percent, but the only positive job creation has been in the public sector, as private sector unemployment has risen to 9.7 percent.  The administration’s spokespersons have been all over the board on jobs creation numbers, claiming anywhere from 640,000 to 2 million; yet the numbers show 2.8 million jobs have been lost since President Obama promised to create 3.5 million jobs when he announced the stimulus package one year ago.  While touting the stimulus as part of the effort to get the country out of the Great Recession, all it has done is help to create the Great Debt.  This information and much more will be available on mywastedtaxdollars.org in March.”

When President Obama pushed for enactment of the ARRA, he promised that the spending would be targeted, timely, and temporary.  Yet his fiscal year 2011 budget extends $266 billion of stimulus spending over the next 10 years, more than offsetting the proposed $240 billion in spending cuts.  The President also promised that his administration would make the stimulus spending transparent and accountable down to the last dime.  Yet the $18 million recovery.gov website has been fraught with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and the Government Accountability Office has exposed the lack of oversight as well as fraud and abuse in the stimulus program.  With this abysmal track record, and examples of wasteful spending such as $21,000 to resurface tennis courts in Livingston, Montana, it is no wonder that a January 24 CNN Poll showed 56 percent of Americans oppose the stimulus.

“President Obama talks incessantly about wasteful government spending and reining in the budget deficit, yet his policies will end up spending more taxpayer money than any previous President,” continued Schatz.  “The stimulus is part of a large down payment on a long-term legacy of fiscal woe, as the national debt will double in the next 10 years.  In the prescient words of CAGW co-founder J. Peter Grace, ‘we’re mortgaging our children’s future…we’re robbing piggy banks, we’re taxing our defenseless children without representation. … It’s unforgiveable.’”

Citizens Against Government Waste is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization dedicated to eliminating waste, fraud, mismanagement and abuse in government.

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