Murtha’s job creation racket doesn’t create many jobs. According to a Washington Post report, “For all the billions in federal contracts the congressman has steered to the region in the past ten years, now at a rate of $100 million a year, joblessness in his distressed district has not improved.”
Moreover, some of the jobs generated have cost a million dollars — or twice that. For example, Planning Systems, Inc. in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, created four jobs using $7 million in earmarks.
Another company to receive Murtha earmark help was Caracal, Inc., To great hoopla, Murtha delivered the ton of tax dollars to Caracal, claiming, “Today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony is yet another indication that our investment in this region’s economic revitalization is paying off.” After receiving more than $150 million in taxpayer help, the company went under. That’s zero sustainable jobs.
With Caracal out of business, the operative question might be, “‘Paying off’ for whom?”
That “whom” now seems to cover a lot of people, for our earmark culture is not limited to Congress. It’s growing. The same economic model behind Murtha’s earmark use underpins last year’s stimulus spending and a likely follow-up round this year. The idea intrinsic to earmarks and government job creation is that politicians and bureaucrats can spend our money better than we can. We just waste our money; they are the great and wise spenders. Though absurd on the face of it, the notion has much to recommend it . . . if you are on the taking end of the practice.
The earmark culture in Congress, so well represented by Congressman Murtha, the new King of Pork, isn’t merely symptomatic of the problem in Washington, it is also emblematic.