Tea Party Candidates Benefit From Stimulus, Federal Spending

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Tea Party Candidates Benefit From Stimulus, Federal Spending
Brian Beutler | September 24, 2010, 8:30AM


Tea party backed Republican candidates -- indeed most Republican candidates -- base their campaigns largely on opposition to President Obama's agenda, and an imprecise pledge to reduce the federal deficit. Perhaps no single issue encapsulates that pledge better than the Democrats' stimulus bill -- one of the President's signature initiatives that is, by design, a big deficit booster. Government can't create jobs, they say, the stimulus wasted tax payer dollars, and simply bloated the federal government.

Scratch under the surface a bit, though, and these candidates' opposition to government spending isn't very deep at all -- particularly when they benefit directly.

Ron Johnson, who claims "government doesn't create jobs," and who's hoping to unseat Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), has perhaps the longest record of benefiting from government largesse.

In 1979 a company called Wisconsin Industrial Shipping Supplies, owned by Johnson's brother-in-law, received a $75,000 development grant from the city of Oshkosh to build a rail spur to a plant it was building. One of the conditions of the grant required WISS to hire 11 people in exchange for the funds. Just a few months later, WISS became Pacur -- the company Johnson owns today -- and the factory was opened. The factory itself was also built with the help of a $1 million government-issued development bond.

Years later, as president of the board of the Grand Opera House in Oshkosh, Johnson would investigate the possibility of obtaining stimulus money to help pay for theater renovations.

more...

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/09/tea-party-candidates-benefit-from-stimulus-federal-spending.php

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