Economic stimulus goes wasted while unemployment remains high

The $862 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 continues to pay meager dividends.  The Labor Department has released employment figures for the month of July and they are underwhelming at best.

Private employers added 71,000 jobs, far below the 200,000 jobs needed to reduce the unemployment rate, which remains at 9.5 percent.  During the same span, there was a net loss of 131,000 jobs, largely due to the end of 143,000 temporary US Census jobs.  Revised figures for the month of June are equally depressing: instead of the initially reported 83,000 jobs created in the private sector, this figure has been lowered to 31,000 or 37% of the original estimate.

Adding insult to injury is a report by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK).  It outlines the stimulus’s 100 most pointless projects (a copy can be downloaded in PDF form here).  At the top of the list: $554,763 for new windows at a visitor center near Mt. St. Helen’s.  The building has been closed since 2007, and there are no plans to reopen it.

Other projects are similarly ridiculous.  Among them:

• $89,000 for a new sidewalk in Boynton, Oklahoma.  It replaces a sidewalk that was paved just five years ago.  Residents of the town, which has a population under 300, say that no one used the sidewalk in the first place.  One section leads straight into a ditch.
• In Washington, D.C., the American Legacy Foundation will receive $497,893 to provide quitting smokers with a smart phone so they can contact their quitting support groups by text message or phone call to prevent relapses.
• $13.3 million to restore Dry Tortugas National Park, one of the least visited parks in America.  It lies 70 miles offshore of Key West, and it costs $165 per person to take the 4-1/2 hour ferry ride to get there.
• $199,862 to help Siberians lobby Russian policymakers.
• $144,541 for Wake Forest University for a study on the effects of cocaine on monkeys.
• $2.4 million for new buses in Winter Haven, Florida.  On average, each of its 40-foot long buses carries two or three passengers an hour.
• At least $39.7 million for renovating politicians’ offices and building them new indoor parking in Topeka, Kansas.  Meanwhile, the state continues to face a school finance crisis.

All told, these 100 projects total $1.72 billion assuming that they do not exceed projected costs.

The unemployment rate remains the same, but at least the people of Boynton have easy access to a ditch.