Easy on the eyes, hard on the pocket book

No different than President Roosevelt’s Work Programs Administration (WPA), President Obama’s $788 billion stimulus program sought to create jobs for the sole sake of creating jobs – not because the economy actually demanded the jobs.  But unlike the WPA, which actually succeeded in employing three million people, Obama’s “stimulus” has failed to create many jobs at all.  And of the few produced, they’ve certainly not been the “shovel-ready” ones he promised.  Additionally, the jobs evaporate as quickly as your tax dollars vanish before your eyes.  After all, if the jobs were legitimate – necessary to occupy a void not already fulfilled in the existing market – then the private sector would have already been on the scene and stepped up to the plate long before the government got there with a plan to waste your money.

One of the best examples of government making jobs for the purpose of making jobs is the nearly $1.5 million that went to build a bus station – you read that correctly, bus “station,” not to improve a bus “system” – in Manitowoc, a sleepy Wisconsin town.  Manitowoc with a population of roughly 33,000 people has bus station, which hardly could be characterized in a significant – if at all – state of disrepair.  In fact according to the town’s local paper, the existing structure could use only minimal updates like fixing wheel chair ramps and mending a leaky ceiling.  But the really deplorable component of the building is that it has a “windowless basement.” The horror! Had Manitowoc chosen the responsible path and opted to make minor improvements to the perfectly functioning, existing station, it’s inconceivable that those improvements could have cost over $1 million.

Setting this reality aside when it came time to vote on accepting the federal funds, Manitowoc’s town council voted overwhelmingly (7-3) to take the roughly $1.5 million of taxpayer money. And how can we really expect the town to turn down such a scintillating offer as this one?  After all, it’s not every day that you’re given over a million dollars with absolutely no strings attached.  Even the WPA required that local and state government foot a portion of the bill for its projects.

Regardless of the fact that a new bus station did not need to be built at all, let’s see just what nearly $1.5 million for a new station gets you.  First off, it likely did not provide the city of Manitowoc with many jobs when it came to building it. The project was merely contracted out and has taken roughly a year to build.  Hamann Construction of Manitowoc received a portion of the contract in addition to five other local subcontractors.  By my calculations, three years after the stimulus was passed and a contract for only a year, doesn’t add up to “shovel-ready” jobs or long-term employment.  And if individuals were in fact hired by these companies for this project, they will likely just as quickly be let off once the project is complete.  That’s the problem with being dependent on government funding, when it disappears so do the jobs.

If the details of this project haven’t infuriated you enough already, here’s the icing on the cake. In addition to paying for the opulent “arched trim and wood ceiling” in the station, federal taxpayers are already subsidizing the ticket fare of passengers riding the bus. The local news article explains, “Historically, about one-half of the system’s annual $2 million budget comes from U.S. taxpayers via the federal government, 40 percent from the state and residents of Manitowoc and Two Rivers, and 10 percent from fares.”  Under no circumstances does this local bus system or station warrant the use of federal taxpayer dollars, your money, to benefit, and barely at that, those in the immediate surrounding areas.  Especially since this expenditure does absolutely nothing for the rest of the nation.  Why on earth should taxpayers in Arkansas have to pay for a local, small town bus station in Wisconsin?

Whether intended or not, the end result of this project wasted money only to build a pretty building.  If one had any doubts initially, it’s now apparent that the purpose of the stimulus wasn’t to create jobs; it was to waste your hard-earned money. At least we can take solace in the fact that we’ll have pretty buildings to look at even though our government will likely have gone bankrupt to build them.

At least one councilman, Jason Sladky, sees this boondoggle for what it really is.  Sladky noted it’s “just an outrageous waste of money.”  We couldn’t say it better ourselves.  He continued “we spent money for the sake of spending money because it was available.” Exactly. If our government is determined to continue to use stimulus money to create jobs for the mere sake of saying it is creating jobs, here’s a proposal it should seriously consider: have construction companies hire workers to build roads with spoons. Just think of how many people that’d employ and provide long-lasting employment to boot!