Stimulus Opponents Sought Money After Law Passed

Rep. Pete Sessions, the firebrand conservative from Dallas, Texas, has relentlessly assailed the stimulus law as a wasteful trillion dollar spending spree that was more about stimulating the government and rewarding political allies than growing the economy and creating jobs.
But that didn't stop the Republican lawmaker from reaching his hand out behind the scenes to seek stimulus money for the suburb of Carrollton after the GOP campaign against the 2009 stimulus law quieted down. The affluent city's rail project is "shovel-ready," Sessions wrote Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood in February, urging his cabinet agency to give full and fair consideration to the city's request for $81 million in stimulus money, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Center for Public Integrity. Ironically, his letter suggested the project would create jobs, undercutting the very public argument he has made against the stimulus.
But as the Center documents in a new study, Sessions was hardly alone. Scores of Republicans and conservative Democrats who voted against the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act subsequently wrote letters requesting funds for projects in a massive, behind-the-scenes letter-writing and phone call campaign.
Those asking for money include Tea Party favorites like freshman Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown and Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann, former presidential candidates Ron Paul and John McCain and Republican congressional leaders like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Many Democratic leaders who had boasted they prevented lawmakers from inserting special spending requests in the stimulus law when it passed also engaged in the behind-the-scenes letter writing to secure funding afterwards, including Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
The letters particularly dismay conservative advocacy groups like the Tea Party and Americans for Tax Reform that have been backing Republicans in the fall election but now see some hypocrisy among candidates they thought were conservative champions of federal spending cuts.
Rep. Michele Bachmann, who has become an icon of the anti-spending conservative movement embodied by the Tea Party, has complained the stimulus bill will require massive tax increases to create short-term jobs and ran a campaign ad this month boasting that she fought against "the failed Pelosi trillion-dollar stimulus."
But she wrote more than a half dozen letters to federal agencies on behalf of proposed stimulus grants, including one to the Transportation Department for a project that she argued "would directly produce 1,407 new jobs per year while indirectly producing 1,563 a year - a total of 2,970 jobs each year after the project's completion." The project did not win the award.

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• pete sessions
• seesions
• tea party
• scott brown
• michele bachmann
• ron paul
• john mccain
• mitch mcconnell
• pelosi
• harry reid
• Bachmann

[tonyteb]

there suppossed to appropriate the money hello

[themredweirdoshow]

Bush Jr. and his freeloader friends who started this whole mess make me sick. Whatever happened to the Republicans' vaunted slogan adaptions of "free enterprise means whatever the market will bear, " "only the strong survive," and "let the chips fall where they may"? But instead all we heard from them was, "All these companies are 'too big to fail,' so let's bail them out"!!!

[jabberwolf]

If they are going to try to steal money from all of us.. and give it to friends.. YES I'd be after some of it to scavange as well.

If you leave the dam tax dollars alone... and allow companies that HAVE the ability to compete instead of giving hand out to friends, you'd have solid job growth.

Seriously do you have to flunk out of econ. 101 to be considered a democrat? It sure seems that way!

[VincetheVet]

What a tool. It's not like they would reduce the size of the stimulus by not requesting money.

And no-one argues that stimulus funding can't create jobs. The argument is that, if left in the taxpayers pockets, the money would create more jobs and more useful jobs elsewhere

[worldtravel101]

we are nearing 14 trillion in debt, yet noone cares...... were screwed

[JizzonTheDark]

If someone stuck a gun to your head and took your money, wouldn't you try to get some of it back?