On the campaign trail recently, Joe Biden forgot the size of the 2009 stimulus bill he was appointed to oversee as Vice President—claiming it was $84 billion when it was in fact ten times that. Biden claims he would oversee the implementation of coronavirus aid far more effectively than President Trump—sadly for Biden, his record tells a different story.
Take for example the weatherization program , a recipient of the 2009 stimulus that Biden touted as a method to create American jobs, save Americans money, and as a step towards energy independence.
He touted at the time: “it’s one of our signature programs…thousands of construction workers across the country are now on the job making energy-saving home improvements that will save working families hundreds of dollars a year on their utility bills.”
What Biden failed to publicize was that in some states, the weatherization program hadn’t even retrofitted one single home, in others the contractors who earned the stimulus were found to be doing shoddy work and failed to train their employees.
An Associated Press investigation found:
By February 2010 – a year after the economic stimulus pumped new money into the decades-old federal Weatherization Assistance Program – fewer than 31,000 homes had been retrofitted, a number the energy department’s inspector general called “alarming” in a special report issued at the time…
In March, an Associated Press review of the program found that the weatherization program had retrofitted a fraction of the homes and created far fewer construction jobs than expected in its first year. In Alaska, Wyoming and the District of Columbia, it failed to produce a single job or help one home.
Biden’s mismanagement of the stimulus extended to Cree, a “green” manufacturer that went on to outsource its LED manufacturing to China. One year after the company received $39 million from the stimulus it opened a factory in Huizhou, China, with 50 percent of its employees working there, and its CEO promising more expansion in the region – notably not in the U.S.
And who could forget the Solyndra disaster?
The solar panel company intentionally lied to the Department of Energy to receive a loan of over half a billion taxpayer dollars which they would never pay back. The company announced bankruptcy a few years later, after it had spent the taxpayer dollars. The IG report found that there were red flags that the government missed, or more likely overlooked in vetting Solyndra.
Overall, of the $535 million loan to Solyndra, American taxpayers were fleeced at least $511 million from the company. And it just so happened one of Solyndra’s well-known private investors was an Obama fundraising bundler named George Kaiser.
In 2011, the Energy Department’s Inspector General reported to Congress that more than 100 criminal investigations were launched related to the 2009 stimulus, leading to at least five criminal prosecutions.
It’s time to lift up the curtain, there is no “Scranton Joe” and he’s no warrior for working class Americans. Biden lauded programs backed by the stimulus that completely ripped-off the American taxpayer and shipped our jobs overseas. Joe Biden’s career speaks for itself, he is not and never will be a decisive leader who puts America First.
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