Over $6B “Stimulated” Districts That Don’t Exist?

Via Watchdog.org, who got the info straight from the horse’s mouth.

Just how big is the stimulus package? Well for one, it has doubled the size of the House of Representatives, according to recovery.gov, which says that funds were distributed to 440 congressional districts that do not exist.

According to data retrieved from recovery.gov, nearly $6.4 billion was used to “create or save” just under 30,000 jobs in these phantom congressional districts–almost $225,000 per job. The web site operates on an $84 million budget and is tasked with monitoring the distribution of the $787 billion stimulus package passed by Congress–which, for the record, counts 435 members–in early 2009.

So let me get this straight. Taxpayers are spending $84 million to fund an organization whose purpose is to be, and I quote, “the U.S. government’s official website providing easy access to data related to Recovery Act spending and allows for the reporting of potential fraud, waste, and abuse.” In other words, the same congressweasels who crammed this massive spending bill down our throats, and who are tasked with doing the spending, have spent $84M to have that spending overseen by some idiots who either sent $6.4B out into the ether to bogus congressional districts, or who weren’t smart enough to figure out that if they wanted to hand it out “unofficially” to someone who wasn’t supposed to get it, they at least needed to claim that it went to a congressional district that actually exists.

The site’s monitors, however, are not too savvy about America’s political or geographic landscape. More than $2 million was given to the 99th District of North Dakota, a state which has only one congressional district. In order to qualify for 99 districts, North Dakota would have to have a population of about 60 million people, almost 24 million more people than California.

The stimulus revived 8 recently retired congressional districts. Pennsylvania’s 21st District has received just under $2 million in funds. Mississippi’s 5th District and Oklahoma’s 6th received $1 million from the legislation, respectively. All three were eliminated by the 2000 census.

Many other recipients carried the banner for congressional districts that have been defunct for decades. South Carolina’s 7th took the cake, garnering more than $27 million in stimulus funds, despite being eliminated in 1930. And Virginia’s 12th District may have been written off at the start of the Civil War, but it must carry some sentimental value in Old Dominion–it received more than $2 million, according to recovery.gov.

For God’s sake, my cats are smarter than that. As a matter of fact, one of them just muttered meowed something in my ear: he wonders if any of these congressional districts might have also played a role in getting Obama elected…and how they might affect things in the upcoming census.

Who knows. But I betcha the government would be happy to use millions of taxpayer dollars to create a website to “disclose” some made up bullshit about that, too.