Free Republic

Who could forget the $5 billion in Obama administration stimulus money that was going to rapidly create nearly 90,000 green jobs across the country in these tough economic times and make so many thousands of homes all snuggy and warm and energy-efficient these very snowy days? Well, a new report due out this morning will show the $5-billion program is so riddled with drafts that so far it's weatherized only about 9,000 homes.

When federal inspectors visited Illinois recently to see how the state was using $242 million in stimulus money for weatherizing homes, they were troubled by what they found. A weatherization contractor had done slipshod work, installing a furnace that leaked gas in one home, they said, and the local agency overseeing the work had failed to detect the leak. The state was not inspecting the work of all the agencies administering the work, and the federal government was not making required site visits. In short, both the state and federal oversight of the program fell short, they found. The Department...

The federal government is sending $5 billion to states to weatherize the homes for low-income families, nearly as much as it has spent on weatherization since the government stepped in to cut heating bills for low-income people in the 1970s. Illinois is flush with $97 million awarded over the summer -- nearly half the $242 million in stimulus weatherization money promised to the state -- and is taking applications from low-income families for free weatherization upgrades to their homes. With that money, Illinois expects to weatherize 22,000 homes this year, more than doubling the 7,800 homes weatherized under energy grants...

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) -- Ready or not, states are getting a tenfold boost in federal money to weatherize drafty homes, an increase so huge it has raised fears of waste and fraud and set off a scramble to find workers and houses for them to repair. An obscure program that installs insulation in homes and makes them more energy-efficient is distributing $4.7 billion in stimulus funds - dwarfing the $447 million originally planned by Congress this year and the $227 million spent in 2008. That is enough to weatherize 1 million homes, instead of the 140,000 normally done each year.