Under the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee’s “Affordable Health Choices Act,” local governments can apply for “community transformation” grants to build jungle gyms, sidewalks, bicycle paths, and grocery stores, to install streetlights, and to establish new farmers’ markets.

The dollar amount of these grants, and of the total “community transformation” earmark program, is left to the discretion of the Obama administration.

Cities can also apply for “community makeover” grants, which can provide them with up to $10 per resident in taxpayer dollars for “beautifying streets.”

Sen. Tom Coburn, MD (R-OK) sponsored an amendment to the HELP Committee bill that would have prevented any funds it made available from being used “to build, develop, or maintain sidewalks, parks, bike paths, or street lights.” The amendment was defeated by party-line vote.

The “Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009,” the House of Representatives’ health overhaul legislation, also contains an earmark for these grants. The House bill sets the amount available for their funding at $1.6 billion.

Sources: “Affordable Health Choices Act,” Title III, Subtitle C
HR 3200, § 3151

I guess the Democrats are going to buy America some really great health care; they clearly don’t plan to be frugal with our money:

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today. He also said the measure’s cost will reach beyond the $634 billion President Barack Obama proposed in his budget request to Congress as a down payment for the policy changes.

Asked whether the cost of a health-care overhaul would be more than $1 trillion, Rangel said, “the answer is yes.”

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I have not yet blogged about Recovery.org, the indispensable site set up by Onvia to keep track of how the Obama administration is spending your ’stimulus’ money. Recovery.org offers a number of ways to search - by state, county and program. They provide updates on how much stimulus funding is spent over time, and how may jobs the administration contends have been created (or saved). The site is doing quite well considering that it must rely on federal agencies for much of its information.

While Recover.org is a private site, the Obama administration has also set up its own site - Recovery.gov. It does not seem to be as up-to-date as the private site, but you can’t really expect a government agency to to move as efficiently or nimbly as the private sector. But while they may lag behind, they’re doing their best to ensure that Recovery.gov is running smoothly by… October:

During a recent field hearing in Brooklyn, N.Y., House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., said Recovery.gov is “not a useful database where citizens can go to see where their money is being spent.” Do you agree with that assessment? How long will it be before the site meets its goals?

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The craptacular porkulus bill passed Congress with almost no Republican votes. That prevents them from running around the country and taking credit for things like this:

The blank expression on the face of the manager of Murtha Airport - just after 1:40 - is priceless. And even this manager - whose job clearly depends on Murtha’s willingness to rob from the taxpayers - can’t help but throw Murtha under the bus when it comes to a multi-million dollar air traffic control center that has been unstaffed for years.

That’s two hundred million dollars of federal tax money for an airport that handles 3 commercial flights daily, and which is generally unstaffed. And what CNN fails to mention is that the 3 daily flights are all between John Murtha’s district and Washington Dulles airport. I wonder whether anyone rides these flights except for Mr. Murtha and his staff.

This is how the Democrats revive economic growth.

Which of these is more common: Democrats abusing their positions of power to waste money, or Democrats showing they no longer take seriously the threat of terrorist attack? This scandal has them both.

House Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) is pushing earmarks worth millions of dollars for homeland security projects at the small Mississippi college that he attended, though the school could not explain what the earmarks are for and does not yet appear to have the capacity to provide the services that Thompson wants to fund.

In an earmark request for 2010 appropriations, Thompson’s Web site indicates that he is seeking $23 million for the “National Institute for Education and Training” at Tougaloo College for “an Operational Test and Evaluation Activity (OTEA) in Vicksburg, Mississippi…”

The money would be “an addition to existing programs” at the institutions, [Thompson's Chief of Staff Lanier] Avant said. Tougaloo “has one of the most renowned engineering programs of all the [historically black colleges and universities] in the country. … It’s not like Tougaloo is some kind of new kid on the block,” he said.

But Tougaloo does not offer an engineering major. The school’s course catalog indicates that there is not a single engineering class being taught at Tougaloo this semester. The school does have a joint program with the Georgia Institute of Technology that allows students to transfer there to get their engineering degree after finishing their liberal arts coursework at Tougaloo.

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