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Townhall
Finance...
Obama’s
Stimulus Waste: $7 million per
House on Internet Access
By Bob Beauprez
7/8/11
In
our blog post of July 5, 2011 we
cited analysis of the recently release quarterly summary report of
Barack
Obama’s Stimulus that concluded the Administration spent $278,000 per
job they
claimed to have “saved or created” with the $666 billion the White
House has
spent thus far of the more than $800 billion authorized by the
legislation
approved in 2009.
The
Administration used the Stimulus
as a private slush fund to funnel vast amounts of money to programs and
industries favored by the President.
One
of his campaign pledges was to
expand broadband internet access, particularly to rural areas, and with
the
Stimulus check book in hand, Obama proceeded to deliver on that promise
spending a total of $7.2 billion, with $2.5 billion specifically
allocated to
“Rural Utilities Service” (RUS).
Jeffry
Eisenach and Kevin Caves of
Navigant Economics, a financial and economic analysis and consulting
firm
looked at the results of Obama’s rural broadband expansion efforts. The results
aren’t very pretty.
The
Navigant analysts evaluated
programs in three areas: Southwestern Montana, Northwestern Kansas, and
Northern Minnesota that received Stimulus funds to extend broadband
access to
homes currently lacking service.
According
to their report, it cost on
average $349,234 per household.
But,
it gets worse.
In
the Montana region, there were
actually a number of providers, including wireless, that already
provided
service in the area.
Eisenach
and Caves found that if 3G
wireless was included, only seven households in the entire region could
be
considered to be without any option for access.
Thus, the cost to extend access to those seven
homes was about $7
million each.
Like
Einstein said of insanity, this
was doing the same thing over again and expecting different results.
According
to the Eisenach and Caves,
“Prior investigations have shown that RUS’ broadband subsidy programs
were not
cost effective, and often funded duplicative coverage in areas already
served
by existing programs.”
But,
Obama funded it anyway – and sent
American taxpayers the bill.
Read
it with links at Townhall Finance
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