Thursday, February 25, 2010
Government at Work - Weatherizing Homes
More of the same.
This was supposed to weatherize 600,000 low-income homes.
So far, NOT so good!...
This was supposed to weatherize 600,000 low-income homes.
So far, NOT so good!...
The New York Post reports:
"But GAO found that, as of Dec. 31 (nearly a year into the program), barely 9,000 homes had, in fact, been weatherized.
The problem? The bill contained, among other flaws, a mandate that everybody hired to do work on the homes be paid a 'prevailing wage' -- which snarled the program in red tape for months as Energy Department bureaucrats came up with such a figure for every county in the nation.
How many "green jobs" could 9,000 houses have created?
Plenty -- for the aforementioned bureaucrats: ABC News reports that, despite the mere trickle of actual work going on, DOE had burned through a whopping $522 million for the program, or more than 10 percent of its stimulus pot.
Now, not to oversimplify things, but that works out to roughly $57,000 per weatherized home.
Meanwhile, a recent report by Texas Watchdog found that of the $3.7 million that state had spent through the program last year, $3.5 million -- or 95 percent -- went to administrative costs.
All in all, the scheme is functioning . . . about as you'd expect a government program would. \"
