Fight Back
Fight Back
By signing CAGW’s Citizen’s Demand, you will enable us to demonstrate widespread outrage and a growing demand among the American public for an end to wasteful stimulus spending. We will tabulate and publicize these Citizen’s Demands to the news media, opinion-makers, public officials, and local activists all across the country.
Citizen’s Demand to End Wasteful Stimulus Spending
Whereas, in February, 2009 Congress passed and President Obama signed into law the $787 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), otherwise known as the “economic stimulus” package;
Whereas, the legislation was designed “to preserve and create jobs and promote economic recovery” (Congressional Record, S.1483);
Whereas, President Obama promised at the time that ARRA would create 3.5 million jobs, 90 percent of which would be in the private sector, and that unemployment would drop to 8 percent;
Whereas, the President also promised that stimulus spending would be targeted, timely, and temporary, as well as transparent and accountable down to the last dime;
Whereas, more than a year after the bill’s enactment, its cost has swelled to $862 billion, yet the economy has shed 2.8 million jobs and lingers on shaky ground;
Whereas, the only job creation has taken place in the public sector and the unemployment rate continues to hover near 10 percent;
Whereas, stimulus money has gone to such projects as a broadband map that will be obsolete by the time it is completed ($350 million), an eco-passage for turtles ($3.4 million), and BlackBerrys for Washington, D.C. smokers ($977,000), rather than to job-creating initiatives;
Whereas, American taxpayers and workers cannot afford this kind of unstimulating “stimulus” spending;
I, therefore, demand that Congress suspend any further ARRA distributions and that the remaining balance of ARRA funds be returned to the U.S. Treasury and used to pay down the nearly $13 trillion national debt.
