Recently The Daily Sentinel referenced “more than $1.3 million in federal stimulus funds” for Grand Junction.  And just a few weeks ago we read how excited Congressman Salazar was to allocate hundreds of thousands of dollars of “ stimulus funds” for the Grand Valley Transportation folks to open a maintenance garage for themselves in Whitewater instead of hiring a locally owned private garage to do the same work.

Stimulus?  Really?

I take exception to the blanket description by the media and many of our elected officials that these are in fact stimulus funds simply because the President and government say so. I certainly don’t believe spending $1.3 million locally on five jobs for three years is what we were pitched during the stimulus approval frenzy.

A more accurate description would be Chinese-financed debt authorized by our credit card Congress.

I see no reason why taxpayers in Florida or Nebraska should pay for our local law enforcement and mechanics anymore than we should pay for theirs.  If we can’t afford it ourselves, maybe it’s time to realign the budget and make tough but necessary choices.  Instead, our elected Washington DC representative, some of our local officials and the media gravitate to the lowest free-lunch thoughtless argument that can be made:  Hey, we got the money!

Our federal government is over $12 trillion in debt and pays over $600 million per day in interest to finance our wasteful spending spree. Guess what else we’re paying for?  This week the House of Representatives passed bills authorizing $25 million for Sea Otter Recovery and $24 million for Marine Turtle Conservation.  Will this be reported as more “stimulus”?  How about last week’s $100,000 federal earmark for trade and convention center improvements in Myrtle Beach?  Are the citizens of Grand Junction happy to be paying for these too?

Maybe the lesson to learn is that it’s not just everyone else’s Congressman.  Maybe it’s ours too.

ALEX CHAFFETZ
Grand Junction

This entry was posted on Friday, July 31st, 2009 at 2:01 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.