Stimulus money game Critics of the $787 billion package show their hypocrisy by going after the funds

DERRICK Z. JACKSON
Globe Columnist

MASSACHUSETTS SENATOR Scott Brown is well known for claiming that the $787 billion stimulus package “hasn’t created one new job.’’ It turned out that Brown was wrong, as the Congressional Budget Office estimated in August that the stimulus increased employment by as many as 3.3 million people in the second quarter of this year.

It also turns out that he was a hypocrite. Brown is one of a host of prominent Republicans who has trashed the stimulus and fanned a toxic anti-government fervor among Americans and groups such as the Tea Party. Yet they made it their private business to net jobs out of the stimulus.

The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative journalism organization, reported this week that it has obtained about 2,000 letters from members of Congress supporting stimulus grant applications, primarily for the departments of transportation, energy, and commerce. One was from Brown in support of the Massachusetts Broadband Institute’s effort to expand broadband access, particularly in Western Massachusetts. Despite his declarations that stimulus funds create no new jobs, Brown wrote, “Broadband coverage is essential to the economic well-being and recovery of Western Massachusetts . . . Broadband coverage is also crucial in bringing together educators and students at our community colleges in order to help prepare our next generation of entrepreneurs and job creators.’’

This was repeated all over the nation by stimulus naysayers. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell said the stimulus was going to “squander an enormous amount of money on things that won’t make much of a difference.’’ Yet he wrote five letters to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood supporting various projects that sounded downright Democrat, including bike paths in the Bowling Green area. In a letter supporting funding to rehab rail lines, McConnell wrote, “supporting Appalachian railroads has the potential to attract industry, create jobs and move goods through areas underserved by national highways.’’

Arizona Senator John McCain, who lost the 2008 presidential race to Barack Obama, said of the stimulus, “I don’t see this legislation doing anything good.’’ But he wrote letters trying to make sure his state received a cut of stimulus dollars for broadband and improvements to Phoenix’s international airport.

House Republican conference leader Mike Pence of Indiana gave the Republican weekly address last weekend, touting the party’s “Pledge to America.’’ The “Pledge’’ vilifies the stimulus package as a top “job-killing’’ policy of President Obama and the Democrats. Pence has also declared the Democrats’ proposals on climate change a “declaration of war on the Midwest by liberals.’’ The same Pence wrote letters on behalf of a bio-fuel initiative that would reduce greenhouse gases and promote “broad-based green job creation.’’

Pence also wrote letters for stimulus projects that would reduce train noise in urban areas and build bike and pedestrian trails to link cultural zones and greenways in the Muncie area. Pence wrote that train noise is “a major hurdle in attracting new business and job creation opportunities.’’ He said linking cultural zones and greenways would “spur economic growth and greatly enhance livability and quality of life.’’

To be sure, the Center for Public Integrity’s investigation raises bipartisan questions of hypocrisy. President Obama and the Democrats, who promised us transparency, passed the stimulus saying it came without the “earmarks’’ that legislators tack on for their districts and balloon the federal budget. Instead, scores of lawmakers of both parties employed backroom “lettermarking’’ for stimulus funds, a practice that the center could expose only after employing the Freedom of Information Act.

Besides Brown’s request, the center so far has published 66 pages of letters signed by Senator John Kerry, the late Senator Ted Kennedy, his appointed replacement Paul Kirk, and House members Michael Capuano, Jim McGovern, Barney Frank, Bill Delahunt, John Tierney, Stephen Lynch, Ed Markey, John Olver, Richard Neal, and Niki Tsongas.

But the cynical way in which the Republicans manipulated and whipped up American anger against the Democrats, yet wrote stimulus letters indistinguishable from those written by Democrats, unnecessarily divided the country and further distracted Americans from uniting on long-term solutions on communications, transportation, and energy.

Scott Brown and the Republicans moan how the stimulus did not create a single job. There is no evidence of moaning as they mine the stimulus.

Derrick Z. Jackson can be reached at jackson@globe.com.