Some Detroit automakers have gotten big federal bailouts from taxpayers. In addition, about $170 million from the federal “stimulus” plan has been set aside for the city of Detroit itself. But if you thought the stimulus was unreasonable, the money approved to “help” Detroit is doubly so.
Less than one-tenth of the $170 million intended to go to the economically depressed city has been spent, the Detroit Free Press reported. For instance, not a cent of the $23.4 million in stimulus grants provided to Detroit’s Public Works Department has been put to work. And only a tiny fraction of funds for the city’s police has been used.
Why the delay in spending the supposedly “stimulating” federal dollars when the city is in such financial difficulties?
Well, Washington bureaucracy is standing in the way.
The way the stimulus was set up, Detroit first must spend its own money on various projects before it can be reimbursed by the federal stimulus. The trouble is, Detroit is already facing a $330 million deficit, so it doesn’t have $170 million of its own to spend so that it can get money back from the feds.
The situation has officials desperately hoping for extensions before they lose the funding altogether.
That’s bad for Detroit. But what’s bad for the rest of the country is that the money is sitting in limbo. It has been borrowed, adding to our $14.3 trillion national debt, on which we must pay massive interest. But it is not being used to get the economy moving. So we’re getting the worst of both worlds: a bigger national debt without the jobs and economic development the stimulus was supposed to create.
Is it any wonder Americans have soured on the “stimulus”?