GOP senators: $7 billion wasted in stimulus
Sen. John McCain blames insufficient provisions for oversight, cost control and competition.
A GOP report released Tuesday charged that 100 projects amounting to $7 billion in waste were funded by February's $787 billion stimulus package.
"If you really want to create jobs with deficit spending, then you need to be doing it in an area that creates the most jobs," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., at a news conference on the report. He and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., spearheaded the project.
Coburn pointed to a shopping mall in Oak Ridge, Tenn., that was awarded $5 million from the stimulus to provide geothermal heat.
"We take $5 million to do geothermal heat on something that is not going to be used in the future, or at least has very little likelihood of being used in the future to the full extent," Coburn said.
McCain said he was not surprised that the stimulus resulted in wasted funds because he contends the package had insufficient provisions for oversight, cost control, and competition. He criticized projects to study ant behavior at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, which received $500,000 and $450,000, respectively.
Coburn said he believes that more than $55 billion will have been wasted once the entire stimulus is spent, citing a previous estimate by Earl Devaney, the chairman of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board.
The two said Vice President Biden, the Obama administration's point man on the stimulus, should take responsibility for the waste. Coburn said he was concerned when Biden was named to oversee the stimulus because "if you look at his voting record [in the Senate], he never saw a spending bill he didn't like."
Coburn and McCain said they would support using stimulus funds to pay for jobs legislation being drafted by Democrats. But Democratic leaders are leaning toward wanting to use funds from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program.
McCain and Coburn said they oppose the idea of using TARP repayment money to address unemployment, arguing that it should instead be used to reduce the deficit. Furthermore, they said, tapping any unused TARP funds would add to the deficit because the money would still have to be borrowed.