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Stimulus Package Neglecting Areas with High Unemployment

Posted by Duane Lester on May 12th, 2009 • Clicks

One of the reasons for the stimulus package is to get people back to work, but the Associated Press has discovered that many of the areas hardest hit by unemployment are not seeing any benefit from the legislation. For example:

Elk County, Pa., isn’t receiving any road money despite its 13.8 percent unemployment rate. Yet the military and college community of Riley County, Kan., with its 3.4 percent unemployment, will benefit from about $56 million to build a highway, improve an intersection and restore a historic farmhouse.

Altogether, the government is set to spend 50 percent more per person in areas with the lowest unemployment than it will in communities with the highest.

The AP reviewed $18.9 billion in projects, the most complete picture available of where states plan to spend the first wave of highway money. The projects account for about half of the $38 billion set aside for states and local governments to spend on roads, bridges and infrastructure in the stimulus plan.

The very promise that Obama made, to spend money quickly and create jobs, is locking out many struggling communities needing those jobs.

The reason these areas are not getting jobs is they don’t have “shovel ready” programs. But the reason they don’t is because they didn’t have the money necessary to prepare. Rather than the money going to “folks looking for work,” it is going to areas where folks already have jobs.

To determine whether there was a disparity in where the money would go, the AP divided the nation’s counties into four groups by unemployment levels. The analysis found that, no matter how the early money is measured, communities suffering most fare the worst:

—High-unemployment counties, those in the top quarter of jobless rates, are allotted about 16 percent of the money, compared with about 20 percent for areas least affected by joblessness.

—In low-unemployment counties nationwide, those in the bottom quarter of jobless rates, the federal government is spending about $89 a person compared with $59 a person in the worst-hit areas.

—In counties with the largest populations, the government is spending about $69 a person in areas with the lowest unemployment and $40 a person in places with the greatest job need.

—Counties with the highest unemployment are most likely to have been passed over completely in the early spending.

Once again, liberalism has the exact opposite result of its stated intent. It’s a good thing we rushed this legislation through and got it out as quickly as possible.

Ray LaHood, the Transportation Secretary, said that if needy areas don’t see transportation projects this year, “workers can still apply for jobs elsewhere.”

Two things. One, if they don’t have a job, how can they afford the gas to get back and forth to work over the long distance and two, why do we need a stimulus package for this? Couldn’t workers find jobs this way without spending hundreds of billions of dollars?

The implementation of this plan is as big a boondoggle as the plan itself. But the PresBO keeps getting in front of the camera, telling teachers and police officers that they have a job because of him. And the people eat it up.

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