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Has anyone seen a breakdown of where all this money went?

Here is a response I received from my Republican Congressman when I e-mailed him. Too bad both of my Senators are leftist rats.

Dear Mr. BubbaBasher:

Thank you for contacting me about your opposition to the $819 billion economic stimulus plan, which passed in the House of Representatives on January 28, 2009 by a vote of 244-188 without my support. This proposed spending bill, H.R. 1, includes some tax rebates, some spending for education, new military construction, spending for transportation and water infrastructure, and expanded Medicaid payments. I am one of only 16 of 435 Members of Congress to vote against each of the government bailouts to date, because I was not willing to spend enormous sums of money on plans I was not confident would help our economy or create the jobs that need to be restored.

The U.S. economy lost more than 2.5 million jobs last year. I believe swift action must be taken to minimize job losses and begin the process of restoring our economy in an accountable, transparent manner. Unfortunately, there is scant evidence that the proposed stimulus package will result in accountable and transparent spending, or that it will be effective in helping the people who need the most help - those who are out of work and those who are anxious about being out of work or losing their business. For instance, of the 152 spending provisions in the legislation, only 34 of the provisions are expected to actually create jobs. In addition, this bill is also wasteful in accomplishing its stated purpose. At a total cost of $819 billion, the package will cost taxpayers more than $225,000 per job for each one of the 3.6 million jobs it is expected to create. Here are just a few examples of this wasteful spending that does not stimulate the economy:

$50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, which recently spent $95,000 for the American Ballet Theatre in New York City; $300,000 to restore an outdoor sculpture collection in Miami, Florida; and $190,000 for various artistic endeavors in San Francisco, CA;
$335 million for STD Education and Prevention, such as the CDC's transgender beauty pageant to advertised HIV testing, and an STD awareness event that taught participants how "to flirt with greater finesse;"
$600 million to buy new cars for government workers, on top of the $3.5 billion already spent each year on government passenger cars;
$150 million for repairs to the Smithsonian Institution, which recently spent $31,000 for designer upholstery, and $4,000 for a heater for the lap pool of their most recent Director; and
$1 billion for the follow-up to the 2010 Census, which does not even begin until April 2010.

The cost of all the government bailouts last year equals nearly all of the federal discretionary spending in 2007, and the only two options to pay for them are to increase taxes or to borrow money and pay for it in another year. In fact, the amount we will pay in interest alone each year for the 2008 bailouts is equal to the entire combined budgets of NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the expenses of running the White House for one year. If the $819 billion bill were to become law, which is the most expensive bailout yet, the annual interest on that new debt alone would equal the entire 2009 budget for the Departments of Labor, Treasury, the Army Corps of Engineers, and running all of Congress.

You deserve a better plan. I support an alternative to the bill that passed, which I believe would be more effective at creating jobs by providing tax incentives to businesses and consumers to stimulate the economy. When the economic models developed by the President's top advisors are applied to a non-partisan estimate of this alternative proposal, the result demonstrates that the proposal could create 6.2 million jobs over the next two years, far more than the 3.6 million potential jobs possible in the passed legislation.

I appreciate you contacting me about the stimulus package, and if I may be of assistance to you on any other issue, please feel free to contact me in my Washington DC office at (202) 225-6365 or online at http://randyforbes.house.gov. With kind personal regards, I am

Yours truly,

J. RANDY FORBES
Member of Congress
JRF:MT