Today, on the one-year anniversary of the enactment of the Obama Administration’s $787 billion so-called “stimulus” bill, House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Doc Hastings (WA-04) released the following statement noting its failure to create jobs and the lethargic release of funds paid out by the U.S. Interior Department.

“The American people were promised job creation by the stimulus bill and that national unemployment would remain below eight percent after its enactment,” said Ranking Member Hastings. “A year later, unemployment hovers near 10 percent and the Interior Department has paid out just 10 percent of the allocated $3 billion in stimulus funds that was intended to create jobs—not exactly reflective of the abundant ‘shovel-ready’ projects that were promised. With the economy losing another 20,000 jobs in January, for a total of 3.3 million lost jobs since last February, Americans can’t wait another year for this Administration to get serious about job creation.”

“From day one, Republicans were against this bloated stimulus bill because of the overwhelming cost to taxpayers when facing a trillion dollar deficit. Rather than ineffective government spending, the Administration should consider some of the Republican ideas for creating jobs, spurring the economy and boosting American energy production through measures like an all-of-the-above-energy plan.”

BACKGROUND

In a letter marking the six month anniversary of the stimulus bill, Ranking Member Hastings specifically asked Secretary Salazar if he could provide “A current estimate of how many jobs have been created as a result of each Department’s stimulus spending, preferably on a project-by-project basis.” Secretary Salazar’s response seemingly ignored the request, presumably because the answer would not have been flattering to the Department’s efforts. The Department is still unable to provide details on how many jobs its $306,499,847 in spending has created.

The following chart from recovery.gov shows the Department’s stimulus spending as of January 29, 2010. Out of the $3 billion allocated to the Department, only $1.2 billion has been obligated to specific projects and only $306.5 million has actually been paid out.

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