The ‘colossal failure’ that helped Doc Hastings’ (R) district (WA)

The Seattle PI ^ | March 20, 2014 | Joel Connelly

[steve86]

No Northwest congressman churned out more boilerplate press releases denouncing President Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus program, enacted in 2009, than U.S. Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.

It turns out, however, that Hastings’ district in Central Washington, where GOP politicians rail against government spending, received more benefit per citizen than any other place in America. The stimulus program carried $308 billion in discretionary spending.

A Brookings Institution panel reported Thursday that the stimulus spent $3,750 per constituent in the Fourth Congressional District, for a total of $2.678 billion dollars. In solidly pro-Obama Seattle, the stimulus spent just over $1 billion, or $1,583 per constituent, in the Seventh Congressional District of Democratic Rep. Jim McDermott.

Stimulus money in the Fourth District went largely devoted to cleanup of the 560-square-mile Hanford Nuclear Reservation, home to America’s largest volume of high-level radioactive waste. Hanford spent a half-century making plutonium for nuclear weapons.

The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland was also a beneficiary of dollars from the stimulus, officially called the American Recovery and Investment Act.

Hastings voted against the stimulus and spent much of 2009 and 2010 grousing over it.

The “massive government spending program” was a “colossal failure” and “reckless spending,” Hastings said in various releases. “Congress must stop the out of control spending pushed by Washington Democrats,” he wrote.

Various right wing groups chimed in. The CATO Institute charged, for instance: “The counties that did the most to put Obama in the White House received a taxpayer funded thank-you in return.”

The place receiving LEAST from the American Recovery and Investment Act was the New York City district of ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner, D-N.Y.

The solidly Democratic district received just $7 per constituent in federal stimulus dollars. The right-thinking, Republican-voting Hastings’ constituents in Central Washington received 500 times as much per capita from the recovery program.

The spending at Hanford was championed by Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who regularly loses Benton, Franklin and Grant counties at election time.

Amidst all of his anti-stimulus statements, however, Hastings did say at one point: “I believe the Hanford site has done a good job in identifying cleanup priorities.”

The Fourth Congressional District is, for all its conservatism, a place built and maintained by the federal government.

The Columbia and Yakima Basin reclamation projects irrigate its crops. Federal dams, from Bonneville to Grand Coulee, generate its hydroelectric power. Hanford is employing as many people in environmental cleanup as it did manufacturing plutonium.

Hastings is retiring from Congress after 20 years. The five Republicans (at the moment) vying to replace him are all stern critics of big government.

[steve86]

This is my district and includes Hanford and my employer until retirement, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Wash.: He railed against the Obama administration’s stimulus program. Yet, his Central Washington district received dollars than anyplace else in the country. The “reckless spending,” as Hastings called it, went largely to clean up radioactive waste at Hanford. .

[mdittmar]

Guess you’ll get a chance to vote for who replaces him.

[latina4dubya]

for some reason i am having a hard time understanding this article...

[Luke21]

Just a hit piece from the Seattle trash newspaper.

[steve86]

The article obviously is written from a left wing (sarcastic) perspective yet is factual, as far as I can tell.

[Steve_Seattle]

Despite its sarcasm, the article does not actually look very closely at what we got for the $2.6 billion. Hanford cleanup? I'd like to see a detailed breakdown of how the $2.6 billion was spent.

As for the cost-per-resident, libs always throw around those stats to obfuscate the issue. For example, infrastructure constructed in low-population areas is actually intended to benefit the entire state, or even the entire region or country, not just the local residents. Dams generate electrical power for entire regions and/or provide irrigation for farms that supply food for entire regions and even world markets. Rural highways do not just serve locals, but are part of the highway grid that connects major cities and allows the transport of local produce to urban markets and manufacturing centers.

[steve86]

Excellent observations.

You could no doubt scour Tri-CityHerald archives for a detailed accounting, as I could, but it’s not really my thing.

[Sicvee]

Connelly is a whiny old lib who has been writing for the PI forever. Money spent for Hanford cleanup mainly serves to pacify environmentalist paranoids in Seattle and Portland. It is something that the feds should have taken care of long ago and to call it economic stimulus is bogus. It is just job security for contractors that have been sucking on the teat for 40 years.

[Steve_Seattle]

"Connelly is a whiny old lib who has been writing for the PI forever. Money spent for Hanford cleanup mainly serves to pacify environmentalist paranoids in Seattle and Portland. It is something that the feds should have taken care of long ago and to call it economic stimulus is bogus. It is just job security for contractors that have been sucking on the teat for 40 years."

The other point about Hanford is that it was originally constructed as part of the World War II effort to develop the atomic bomb; hence, its purpose was not local, but national, and the "cost-per-resident" was all out of proportion - because of the enormous cost of that kind of research - to the local population. Any long-term environmental issues at the site are truly the responsibility of the federal government; they are not pork-barrel handouts to the average citizen who voted for Doc Hastings.