The hearing was to include Earl Devaney, the Obama Amatueristration's chief regulator assigned to ride herd on the outflow of stimulus funding. Devaney has been charged with two tasks: establishing a web site to track the spending and minimizing the extent to which the money is wasted, stolen and mismanaged.
Job number two was compromised when the stimulus bill got passed and signed. Job number one seems pretty much irrelevant. I'm sure Porkulus.Com will have numerous bells and whistles. Perhaps they'll include a link for me to reserve tee-times at the Austin Frisbee Golf Course.
Committee Chair Brad Miller (D-NC) graced Mr. Devaney with his august presence. Democratic Reps. Steven R. Rothman of New Jersey, Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, Charlie Wilson of Ohio, Alan Grayson of Florida and Bart Gordon of Tennessee, as well as Republican Reps. Brian P. Bilbray of California and Ralph M. Hall of Texas were all too busy. The House has always proven far better at appropriating than managing.
Chairman Miller put on a cheery good spirit as he managed the debaucle of a hearing. He briefed us on his plan for carrying out his mandate without any tangible support from 70% of his committee. Gues what, Mr. Taxpayer: You've been deputized!
"We are, in essence, deputizing the entire American citizenry to help with the oversight of this program," said Rep. Brad Miller,
"I'm going to have millions of citizens to help me," he said, comparing run-of-the-mill Americans to inspectors general, the high-ranking officials charged with ferreting out waste and abuse in federal agencies.
"I'm going to have a million little IGs running around," the chairman said Tuesday after his testimony before the subcommittee.
It's a shame he neglected the earmarks for a million little quarter-mile jogging tracks. We're looking at a crisis that is going to waste. What crisis? The greatest opportunity for fraud, waste and abuse since Darneen Druyen got put in charge of awarding an Air Force tanker contract.
The FBI director, Robert Mueller predicted a flood of stimulus related fraud schemes. He predicted an exponential increase in white-collar crime directed at the US Government. He may not be a rocket scientist, but Mueller must have stayed in a Holiday Inn Express before his 25 March Congressional testimony.
"Our expectation is that economic crimes will continue to skyrocket," he said. "…The unprecedented level of financial resources committed by the federal government…will lead to an inevitable increase in economic crime and public corruption cases."
Perhaps he forsaw the entire front-page staff at TMR donning our shiny deputy stars, horse-collaring Charlie Rangel, Alan Mollohan, James Moran and his crusty side-kick Murtha and bringing them before the bar of justice to face the condign lariat. Probably not, but he's certainly on to something.
This being a hearing and all, Rep. Miller asked Mr. Devaney how the website was coming along. It seems to be what PMs hawking screwed-up defense programs euphemistically refer to as a "spiral-development."
"As I mentioned in my testimony," Mr. Devaney said, "that Web site is evolving. ... I would probably be the first to admit today the Web site doesn't give you that kind of information."
Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia, pointed out that he voted against the stimulus and will never do well on Jeopardy because he doesn't phrase his responses as questions. Nevertheless, he made a good point of the blindingly obvious.
"Simply put, the American people need to know what they got for their money," he said. "Under the Obama budget, the national debt will double in five years and triple in 10."
Just to be certain he had registered his contempt, he asked a question concerning one of Barack Obama's preposterous promisises regarding this porkapolooza of a boondoggle bill.
"How do you plan to verify the actual number of jobs created?" he asked.
"Sir, we haven't really received any information about that on the Web site," Mr. Devaney said.
Nor will he, nor will we, nor will anyone alive and walking the planet. It is sorta cool getting deputized though.
"How do you plan to verify the actual number of jobs created?" he asked.
Remember, it is no longer about creating jobs so much as saving or creating jobs. SO, you simply take the total number of jobs lost in any particular month and multiply that number by 1.5 to compute how many jobs the Obamessiah was able to save.
"Miss Tagart, do you know the hallmark of the second-rater? It's resentment of another man's achievement."