HOW MUCH MONEY CAN WE OVERSPEND

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THE DEFICIT THAT'S KILLING AMERICA
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KATHY POSNER'S
POINT OF VIEW
FROM
CHICAGO
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Barack Obama

In speaking to my learned friend, former Congressman Michael Flanagan, I was informed that right now the Federal government is OVERSPENDING its income by about $1.5 TRILLION a year. That might be a hard number to fathom, so I will reduce it to a manageable, understandable number. How about $1 BILLION every 6 hours, day in and day out—24 hours a day? Everyone understands a BILLION dollars because you start overspending that much every six hours and now you are talking real money! I want to make sure that everyone understands that the $1 BILLION per 6 hours is not just SPENDING, but OVERSPENDING!! Big difference! Yet with all this OVERSPENDING, Obama announces today that we cannot afford the defense budget and that it would be cut deeply. Our nation can OVERSPEND on all sorts of social spending—putting the country into inconceivable debt—yet the defense of our nation is an affront to the Liberals running the show.The rules on Obama’s Stimulus Money package are insane. Just one example of this is what happened recently in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. Pawtucket is on the verge of bankruptcy. The city has a $5.2 million school budget deficit, a $4.8 million municipal deficit and has eliminated 40 city jobs this year. What did they do with their federal stimulus money? They are constructing a skateboard park at a local school. When local officials were asked why a city in so much financial trouble is building a skateboard park the answer was, “that projects had to be “shovel-ready” to receive funding and that this is the one we have that is shovel-ready.”How about $100 million in stimulus money for a program that only has ONE EMPLOYEE? The website AllGov.com recently reported that the stimulus fund will give $100 million to the Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program (EFSP), a public-private organization that was created in 1983 to help provide for the needs of hungry and homeless Americans. The program, which is supposed to be overseen by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), awards grants to local social service organizations. It sounds like a good idea, but there’s one catch: the EFSP has only ONE EMPLOYEE. A recent report by the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security put the problem succinctly: “Staff within the Emergency Food and Shelter Program declined from six in 1997 to one in 2008, According to FEMA program officials, this decline led to a significant decrease in financial and program monitoring. Having one staff member responsible for both monitoring activities reduces FEMA’s ability to ensure the appropriate use of grant funds.” A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told The Center for Public integrity that, despite the influx of $100 million are no plans to add to EFSP’s staff of one.Maybe if I hire an assistant and have a staff of TWO, I can get $200 million in stimulus money. Anybody want the job?
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