President Obama's much touted economic stimulus plan has been thought of as everything from a desperately needed cash injection into the nation's economy to a bloated pork fest --- which is also a good description of the menu at Applebee's. One thing is for certain however: this plan is not without its harsh critics, ardent defenders, and insanely expensive pet projects. One of those extravagantly not-cheap projects is raising a few eye brows on Capitol Hill.
Politico is reporting that FutureGen, a $1 billion clean-coal initiative that was an early pet project of then-Senator Barack Obama, has found new life deep in the gilded recesses of the stimulus plan. The project was originally nixed by the Bush administration, but it's now back with a vengeance.
Now we know what you're thinking. "I thought both President Obama and Speaker Pelosi specifically said there wouldn't be any earmarks in the stimulus bill." Well they did say that, and it doesn't really matter. Because you see, the $1 billion the federal government is spending on building a near-zero emissions power plant in the bustling metropolis of Mattoon, Illinois, isn't really an earmark... not technically, anyway.
First, it is important to know what exactly FutureGen is. The project's website describes it as a "first of its kind coal-fueled power plant that will link state of the art technologies to produce electricity and hydrogen with near-zero emissions." The project would produce enough electricity to power 150,000 homes across Illinois, pumping potentially dangerous carbon emissions down into the Earth's surface rather than out into the atmosphere.
Normally $1 billion for funding of a specific project of this magnitude would be considered by most clear-thinking individuals to be, for better or worse, an earmark. Well, not so fast. The stimulus package called for $3.4 billion to be spent on "Fossil Energy Research and Development," and the FutureGen project was determined by Energy Secretary Steven Chu to be the only proposed R&D project that was "shovel ready."
FutureGen funding was not specifically called for in the stimulus bill, which would have officially made it an earmark. Rather, it just so happened to be the only project that was found to be eligible for the federal funding set aside in the bill. Talk about "shovel ready."
FutureGen certainly has its defenders in the federal bureaucracy. Energy Department spokesperson Stephanie Mueller noted that Secretary Chu "has always stated that we need to find a way to implement a commercial-scale carbon sequestration project." A spokesman from Illinois Senator Dick Durbin's office defended FutureGen against its critics. "It is not an earmark. To say that it is just isn't accurate," spokesman Joe Shoemaker told Politico.
One of the project's harshest critics, Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn, is making FutureGen's demise something of a personal odyssey. "FutureGen is the most expensive earmark in history," Coburn said in an official statement. "And it is one of the most egregious examples of stimulus dollars being handed out on the basis of politics rather than merit or need." Shoemaker fired back at Coburn's criticism while landing a few verbal haymakers of his own. "If members of the Senate let every Coburn objection stop them in their tracks, the Senate would do nothing," he told Politico. "That's Senator Coburn's real objective - to do nothing."
Shockingly enough, someone who actually works for the FutureGen project had an opinion the criticism surrounding it. Spokesman Lawrence Pacheco told Politico that the project is "going to revolutionize the way electricity is generated from coal. It's very valuable technology, and if the U.S. doesn't develop and improve it, another country will." You could probably replace the word "coal" in that statement with "the atom" and it would sound an awful lot like 1945 all over again, but that is a panic for another day.
At the end of the day FutureGen is indeed a massive spending project, but that's what a stimulus package ultimately is...a list of things that the federal government plans to spend money on. You can criticize the project, and those criticisms may prove to be more valid than anyone can imagine, but just don't act shocked that the federal government is going to use a stimulus package as an excuse to throw serious dollars at pet projects. FutureGen may very well prove to be a revolutionary energy initiative, it would be a wonderful thing for America if that turned out to be the case, but chances are it will end up being a project of middling effectiveness for an astronomical cost. Hey, what else is new?
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