Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Congress / Kotz / Politics Zach Wamp, Lincoln Davis Seek $25 Million TVA Welfare Package
Posted by Pete Kotz on Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 5:23 AM
The two congressmen want the money to come from President Obama's stimulus package, a Rooseveltian public projects scheme designed to beef up the economy. But while bailouts are all the rage these days--and the congressmen are only trying to help TVA customers, who'll pick up the tab for the agency's negligence--the move looks suspiciously like pork. Simply having the feds pick up the tab won't create any new jobs.
Sen. Lamar Alexander, a previous welfare backer, seems to have withdrawn his support. And Sen. Bob Corker has returned to Earth after his union busting foray during the auto bailout. As Corker told the Chattanooga Times Free Press: "It's a discredit to the whole process to in any way allude to (the aid) as a stimulus," Corker said. "This is exactly the kind of thing that causes Americans to be so discontented with Congress. That is not a stimulus. If people want to talk about this as the 2009 pork package, that's a different thing."
Comments (4)
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Hey, Reps. Wamp & Davis: there is already a federal program available to help clean up the TVA's coal ash mess. It's called the SUPERFUND program. You should be familiar with them, since Tennessee has quite a few of them, including in Oak Ridge ...
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TVA is a federally owned corporation. Hard to see it being welfare to insist that the owners of a corporation pay for the mess said corporation made.
I think the Superfund is broke, Beale. There's like five major sites that gobble up most of the money, so there's a waiting list of thousands of sites for cleanup. This is the kind of emergency that could put TVA to the front of the list, but my guess is there still wouldn't be any money available to help.
