Email This StoryLariat Letters: Recovery.gov necessary, but not sufficient
Nov. 6, 2009
More than a site needed to hold government accountable
The recovery.gov Web site is indeed a step in the right direction for governmental transparency.
However, the creation of a Web site does not constitute governmental accountability by itself. Yes, recovery.gov allows citizens to see where the stimulus money goes.
However, the job creation claims made by the Web site are, frankly, incredible, as is the notion that the current administration is a model of fiscal accountability.
The "jobs created or saved" claim is one of the most laughable claims ever made by an administration. The numbers cited by the administration to back up these job claims are provided, as a recent Wall Street Journal article ("Stimulus and the Jobless Recovery," Nov. 2) points out, by the very same federal agencies that received the cash from the stimulus package, providing them with a major incentive to inflate the numbers of jobs "created or saved" for their own benefit.
The "saved" jobs claims can be neither proved nor disproved, and a federal agency can make almost any claim about how many jobs were "saved" by the stimulus money it received. These claims are utterly meaningless, and they should be treated as such.
The president's "admirable choice" to create this Web site would not have been necessary if he had never promoted and signed such a massive spending package.
The $787 billion spent by this stimulus package, along with the $700 billion TARP program and the $410 billion Omnibus Appropriations Act, is a major reason why the federal deficit stands at $1.4 trillion for the year 2009.
President Obama's promises to cut the deficit in half by the end of his first term are not very encouraging considering the fact that achieving this goal would still leave a $700 billion deficit.
Does this not constitute, to an even greater degree, the same "excessive and reckless handling of government funds" that The Lariat blames for the current economic downturn?
A change in economic policy, rather than a Web site, is needed to achieve real governmental accountability.
Ashby Davis
Shreveport, Louis. Freshman
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