Much of Obama 'stimulus' sent US taxpayer dollars to create jobs in foreign countries

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At a critical time in America, billions were taken from US taxpayers and transferred to foreign companies instead of creating US jobs as promised. Since this news became public, the Obama administration "stopped making announcements" of certain new grants.

• 2/8/10, "Renewable energy money still going abroad, despite criticism from Congress," Investigative Reporting Workshop, by R. Choma

From the article, Obama's reaction was to say the stimulus wasn't about creating jobs immediately, but over the long term. A rep who speaks for all 'wind energy' firms said they needed the money in 'tough times.'

• "The Investigative Reporting Workshop reported this story in coordination with ABC's World News Tonight with Diane Sawyer and the Watchdog Institute, a non-profit investigative journalism group based at San Diego State University.

2/8/10, "Money from the 2009 stimulus bill to help support the renewable energy industry continues to flow overseas, despite Congressional criticism and calls for change, according to a new analysis of the program by the Investigative Reporting Workshop.

• The Workshop was the first to report last October that more than 80 percent of the first $1 billion in grants to wind energy companies
  
• went to foreign firms.
  

Since then, the administration has stopped making announcements of new grants to wind, solar and geothermal companies,

• but has handed out another $1 billion, bringing the total given out to $2.1 billion and the total that went to companies
  
• based overseas to more than 79 percent.

In fact, the largest grant made under the program so far, a $178 million payment on Dec. 29, went to Babcock & Brown,

• a bankrupt Australian company that built a Texas wind farm using turbines made by a Japanese company.

The same day the Workshop first reported on this story a consortium of American and Chinese companies announced a deal to build a $1.5 billion wind farm in Texas,

• using imported Chinese turbines.
  

Company officials said they planned to collect $450 million in stimulus grants for the project.

• The deal would create dozens of jobs in the U.S. and
  

• thousands in China.
  

The news provoked outrage among lawmakers, particularly after the Energy Department seemed to take a neutral stance, declining to say whether it would reject such an application...

• The administration and the wind energy lobby now say that the aim of the program
  

• was not to create jobs immediately,
  

• despite its being included in the stimulus package,

but rather to help support long-term investments in renewable manufacturing in the United States. The program, which cost $1.05 billion in the year ended last Sept. 30, would get another $3.08 billion this fiscal year, and will peak in 2011 with an outlay of $4.46 billion, according to the president's proposed budget released in early February.

• Rob Gramlich, vice-president for public policy at the American Wind Energy Association , the industry’s main lobbying and advocacy group
  

• which counts all of the foreign companies that have received funding thus far as members,
  

told the Workshop the grants were only intended as a lifeline

• to keep the industry afloat
  

• during tough times."...

"While some construction jobs are created when a wind farm is built,

• they last, on average, nine months."...

via Tom Nelson, chart from DOE in 2/2010 article

• P.S. From the article, the stimulus bill did not require that jobs be created in the US.