The Obama Weatherization Scam

RUSH: ‘Dispatch from Planet Stimulus,’ by Stephen Spruiell at National Review Online’s The Corner. The New York Times: ”Energy Funds Went Unspent, U.S. Auditor Says — The recession is lingering, and so is the unspent stimulus money that was meant to help end it. The latest example is the $3.2 billion that Congress voted in February 2009 as part of an economic stimulus package to simultaneously provide jobs and improve energy efficiency through block grants to states and cities. Only about 8.4 percent of the money had been spent by the beginning of this month…” This is the weatherization scam, and Mort Th’Zuckerman referred to it in his opening paragraph in his Wall Street Journal piece. The weatherization program. Weather…? (laughing) This is economic expansion, economic growth. This is stimulus. He gonna create jobs. The weatherization program has gotta be one of the biggest scams to ever come down the pike — and with this regime, that’s saying a lot. If you read Stephen Spruiell’s piece, one reason they can’t spend the money fast enough is the unions. Underneath every pile of crap in this country, you will find a union leader somewhere.

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RUSH: Somewhere in Alabama. He must remain anonymous, cannot give the name. Welcome to the EIB Network. Hello.

CALLER: Hi, Rush. Thanks. It’s an honor to talk to you.

RUSH: Thank you, sir.

CALLER: I am calling because I am one of the weatherization contractors you’re speaking about.

RUSH: Yeah?

CALLER: I have firsthand experience about the program itself and I can tell you it’s a pretty big joke. It is obviously nothing but another entitlement program. We’re going into people’s homes that they call unfortunate or underprivileged, and we’re doing the things that the rest of us have to do on our homes at our own expense, out of our own pockets, whether it be insulating their homes or simply changing a hot water heater. But the biggest joke is actually from the administration’s standpoint. From the administration’s standpoint there’s so much disorganization. I’ve actually taken classes telling me how they want these things done, the exact things that they want done at a federal level, and then we turn around and go to the local agencies — and there are about 17 throughout the state 00 but each one of them has a different way that they want these things done. So it’s not even efficient from the standpoint of just the work itself. We have to turn around and do things to appease certain administrators.

RUSH: Let me ask you a question out there, Can’t Give Your Name. What are you weatherizing against in Alabama?

CALLER: Well, basically we go to people’s homes, they tell us they have $300 or $400 a month electric bills or gas bills and what we’re supposed to be doing is bringing down those bills. So we may spend anywhere from five to $7,000 per home and once we do the work that we do, all it’s supposed to do is bring down their electric bill.

RUSH: Right.

CALLER: We’re supposed to seal the air from flowing through the home.

RUSH: Right, and taxpayers are paying for the weatherization?

CALLER: Absolutely, 100%, so nothing that comes out of the homeowner’s pocket.

RUSH: So five to $7,000 to weatherize a home in order to get a bill down a hundred bucks an month?

CALLER: That’s average. Some of them are more. We’ve seen ’em 12 to $15,000 a home.

RUSH: Right. So it’s going to take decades to pay all this back in terms of savings?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: But then of course when the carbon tax hits everybody’s utility bill’s going to go up, canceling out the savings.

CALLER: That’s right. Absolutely.

RUSH: So this is a bunch of make-work designed to make Obama and the left look good, like they care and like they’re doing things to help people with global warming and so forth. And there are no standards to it; you’ve gotta make different… Well, you have to do things differently for every bureaucracy you’re working with.

CALLER: That’s right. Absolutely. There’s just complete disorganization on the whole thing.

RUSH: How did you get into this?

CALLER: Well, the guy that I work for, we’ve done work for the government my entire tenure with this company. We work at the VA hospitals and things like that. But this is just a program that money was taken away from certain VA’s — either that or just not able to get it.

RUSH: Oh. I know.

CALLER: Since that happened —

RUSH: Money is being taken away from the food stamp program for Michelle Obama’s obesity program?

CALLER: (chuckles) That’s right. That’s right.

RUSH: Yeah. Oh, that’s how it works. Okay. So they took money away from the VA to weatherize places?

CALLER: Absolutely.

RUSH: Yeah.

CALLER: And I say taken away, I don’t have any documentation showing that but I can tell you that I stayed at the VA hospitals for about four or five years, and now we have absolutely nothing there. So I would imagine it’s happened that way.

RUSH: Well… (sigh) Delightful. Just delightful. Thanks for the call, Can’t Give Your Name. It’s a pleasure to talk to you. Well, it is a pleasure to talk to you. Whey am I’m not surprised? And this is tip of the iceberg when these people get their hands finally on your health care. Nothing’s real. Nothing is real. The frustrating thing about it is the moment I hear Obama say, ‘We got a weatherization program. We need solar panels on the roof!’ It’s all bogus, especially as economic stimulus. This is insanity that these people think any of this matters. It doesn’t matter to a hill of beans.