As Ian Talley and Stephen Power report in the Wall Street Journal, the Energy Department has expended only 7% of stimulus funds the Department received in 2008 — funds that are supposed to go to job creation and innovative energy projects. The tension at Energy is between vetting proposals carefully and getting money out the door quickly. Officials want to avoid even the appearance of waste or haste in the selection process, something the Obama administration takes seriously. But jobs are not being created even as other major programs at the DOE are also experiencing a slow rollout. What’s the problem?
Talley and Power sum it up as follows: “department offices were still too short-staffed and under-trained to handle such a massive increase in funding authority.”
Congress usually hates to fund new government hires, but in this case it’s understandable that more hands are needed. Spending billions of dollars effectively isn’t easy. So for future projects of this kind, Congress should include funding for temporary, project-related hires and training programs. If they had set aside even a small portion of the billions in funding for temporary hires, contracts, and training, we’d have more funding going to clean energy projects and more people employed.
Topics:
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act,
Dept. of Energy,
Free Agency,
Training
Tags:
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Department of Energy,
Dept. of Energy,
Dr. Steven Chu,
electric cars,
renewable energy,
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Steven Chu,
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