The Department of Energy, the most inept agency in the history of America, has become even more hapless. In the $787 billion Stimulus Bill, $84 billion went to the DOE. Dr. Chu, a pointy-headed career academic, must have been completely overwhelmed with the magnitude of his task. To squander $84 billion would challenge most academics.
Through 11-3-09 he had managed to award 3.9% according to the Pew Center. Of his total budget, he awarded 55.7%.
Undaunted, President Obama raised the 2010 DOE budget by $1.6 billion at the expense of other agencies. A nice reward for Dr. Chu for failing miserably in 2009.
Remember, the mission of the DOE since inception has always been to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. In over 20 years we taxpayers have donated almost $1 trillion to this farce. Meanwhile our dependency has gone up from 40% to 70%. Nice job, DOE.
Billions have gone to grants that produced nothing. Now, billions more will go to hire more pointy headed academics like Dr. Chu to spend time in new state of the art labs and create nothing.
Now, President Obama wants to allocate $50 billion for new nuclear power plants. In the twenty years we have stopped building nuclear power plants we could have built enough to supply most of our power needs with the money squandered on the DOE.
You wonder why we have a tea party movement. The beat goes on with the reckless spending in Washington. Instead of bringing in income by leasing offshore drilling sites we spend to hire more worthless government workers. And, we raise their pay more every year than the private sector raises salaries. And, we give them better benefits and more generous retirement packages. All, without any accountability to produce anything.
When Dr. Chu can’t find ways to blow billions in stimulus money, you know how incompetent he is. Most incompetent employees have no issue with exceeding expense budgets.
It would be nice to think Dr. Chu realizes there are no silver bullets to solve our energy problems and he’s just being prudent. But, that’s a pretty big stretch to think the good Doctor doesn’t have plans to set up hundreds of new labs all over this land producing nothing but another cost center without benefit drain.
Our government is totally out of control. You need not look further than the DOE for proof.
