Research

Almost one year ago, a week after President Obama signed his $862 billion stimulus package into law, he announced that Vice President Joe Biden would ensure there was no wasteful or fraudulent stimulus spending, because, Obama said, “nobody messes with Joe.”

But one year later, it looks like somebody did mess with Joe, which is why we kicked off our week long “They Messed With Joe” video research briefing series this morning, a retrospective leading up to the one year anniversary of the stimulus bill signing next Wednesday. Today’s video highlighted the many phantom Congressional districts that stimulus dollars went to and where the White House claimed they created jobs. 

At the same time, American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop has a new report showing billions of dollars in stimulus funds intended for the renewable energy industry is being shipped overseas:

The Workshop was the first to report last October that more than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind energy companies went to foreign firms. Since then, the administration has stopped making announcements of new grants to wind, solar and geothermal companies, but has handed out another $1 billion, bringing the total given out to $2.1 billion and the total that went to companies based overseas to more than 79 percent.

Along with the funds heading overseas, Russ Choma of the Investigative Reporting Workshop notes, “about 6,000 jobs have been created overseas, and maybe a couple hundred have been created in the U.S.”  Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY) was not happy:

In all due respect I remind the secretary (of Energy) there is a four-letter word associated with the stimulus -- J-O-B-S… Very few jobs here, lots of jobs in China. That is not what I intended or any other legislator who voted for the stimulus intended.

That’s right, folks.  Obama’s stimulus is creating real jobs in China and fake jobs in American Congressional Districts that don’t exist.  No wonder we’ve run into stagnation.