Fraud-Infested Weatherization Program Gets Billions

In the latest of many scandals involving President Obama’s monstrous stimulus, a fraud-infested welfare program to make low-income houses energy efficient is cheating taxpayers out of billions with a recent example documented in Wisconsin.

At least $5 billion in stimulus funds have been allocated to “weatherization” programs nationwide with virtually no oversight and plenty of corruption. The U.S. Department of Energy distributes the cash to local “community groups” that usually subcontract companies to do the actual work. Low-income homeowners get free insulation, sealing and even new central heating and cooling systems compliments of Uncle Sam. Some people even get new refrigerators, water heaters and furnaces.

In  Wisconsin a nonprofit called La Casa de Esperanza (The House of Hope) got nearly $20 million to weatherize homes in three counties but instead has spent some of the money on gift cards for its employees, Christmas decorations, Halloween candy and to pay parking tickets, according to a Milwaukee newspaper report.

Additionally, the husband of a charity employee illegally got $10,000 worth of U.S. taxpayer-financed work on his home and much of the weatherization done on houses that actually qualified was faulty or didn’t meet the federal standards. In all, Wisconsin is getting $141.5 million in stimulus funds for its weatherization projects.

La Casa’s finance director defended his community group’s weatherization program, saying that “if you looked at every single operator you would find similar problems everywhere” because “that’s the nature of the business.”

Perhaps that’s why funding for the decades-old federal weatherization program got nixed in 2008. Even when it was fully operational it only received about $220 million annually, not the huge infusion that President Obama has given it. The stimulus also gave other states big chunks of cash for weatherization, including $327 million to Texas and $132 to North Carolina.

The allocations are simply a speck on the never ending list of examples of fraud and abuse in the $787 billion stimulus that Obama promised would jumpstart the economy and put Americans back to work. Instead, tens of millions of dollars have gone to companies under criminal investigation for defrauding the government and tens of millions more have funded wasteful projects including multi million-dollar turtle crossings, abandoned train stations and Social Security stimulus checks for 10,000 dead people.