Thursday, February 05, 2009

Blagojevich Earmark in the Stimulus Bill

You read that right. The disgraced former governor put a $2 billion earmark in the stimulus bill.

After FutureGen was abandoned, disgraced Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich paid Cassidy and Associates, a major Washington, D.C. lobbying firm, $468,000 in public funds to lobby to restart the project. The Illinois delegation in Congress has also been pushing hard for the FutureGen earmark, despite the fact that the Obama administration has been vocal about their opposition to earmarks in the stimulus, and has even specfically said they are oppposed to including funding for FutureGen in the bill.

Obama is against this but it is still in the stimulus. I have to agree that this thing is just one big Christmas Tree for liberal fat cats. $30 billion for infrastructure is just too little if they wanted to follow the Obama rhetoric of biggest road expansion since Eisenhower created the Interstate Highway system in the late 50s. I hope the GOP can block the thing and turn it into actual stimulus and not just a bunch of giveaways to Blago.

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