Tennessee Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey told the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club today that the stimulus funds the federal government is sending the state is “fraud waiting to happen.”
Lt. Gov. Ramsey said the state is taking $97 million for weatherization of homes, where state officials previously had spent no more than $6 million per year for those programs.
Likewise, he said, $800 million in additional funding for food stamps would mean the state would have to increase payments or lower the requirements for recipients. But he said those funds will run out in two years, and the standards will be hard to change back.
The lieutenant governor said he and other lawmakers will have to hold Gov. Phil Bredesen’s “feet to the fire” for the rest of the governor’s term, which ends in January 2011.
For full details, see tomorrow’s Chattanooga Times Free Press.
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