RSS Feed MenuIt’s not the Republicans who are obstructing Obama, it’s the unions, says Mickey Kaus.
The home “weatherization” jobs in the stimulus bill were subjected to Davis-Bacon wage regulations–a favorite of the AFL-CIO Building and Construction Trades Department–under which federal Labor Department officials establish “prevailing wage” rates that must be paid. All that finagling takes a certain amount of bureaucracy, however–and time. ABC’s Jonathan Karl:
According to the GAO report, the Department of Labor spent most of last year trying to determine the prevailing wage is for weatherization work, a determination that had to be made for each of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States. [E.A.]
As a result, the Department of Energy apparently weatherized only 22,000 homes under the program. Another pre-existing program, which doesn’t have to comply with Davis-Bacon, appears to have weatherized about 100,000 homes, if my math is right.
balconesfault // Feb 19, 2010 at 11:30 am
You did note the date in the article you linked to, right?
LaHood’s action will put a floor under wages paid for the more than 678,000 construction jobs (pdf) that the White House estimates will be created by the end of 2010.
End of 2010. These programs phased in slowly, as the rules were set up to make sure that you wouldn’t just have a wave of scam artists running around doing shoddy work and pocketing government dollars. There is approval and oversight. Most of the work wasn’t expected to be started yet – but the pace should definitely be picking up through this year.