I have previously written about House Minority Whip Eric Cantor's YouCut initiative to get American citizens weighing in on proposed spending cuts guaranteed to get an up-or-down floor vote. Well, I'm touting this week's YouCut winner because the issue is one of my absolute biggest pet peeves: STIMULUS SIGNS! Know what I'm talking about? If you drive even on a semi-regular basis, I'm sure you do because these obnoxious, green signs that say "Project Funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" are plastered on roads all across the nation.
Many people have voiced frustration over the questionable cost and necessity of such signage, but first-term Representative Aaron Schock (R-IL) finally took action and introduced H.R. 5679, the End the Stimulus Advertisement Act, to prohibit future production. In a Chicago Tribune article, Representative Schock calls the signs "propaganda" and an "unnecessary overhead expense." He claims each sign costs $300 each, not to mention an additional $200 to install them. Illinois has posted 950 signs around various highway and transit projects, costing the state roughly $665,000 that comes out of their allocated $936 million in stimulus cash. Is that fiscal responsibility? I think not.
In his press release introducing H.R. 5679, Representative Schock says, "Reports have stated these signs can cost taxpayers up to $10,000 and my home state of Illinois has spent over $650,000 on these signs. That's roughly $20 million spent nationwide, without creating one single job. Despite being sold as an infrastructure improvement package, less than 8 percent of these funds went to infrastructure projects, and to add insult to injury, $20 million of that is going to signs."
While the YouCut vote (that would have saved taxpayers tens of millions) failed, H.R. 5679 is still pending in the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. Click here to vote on this week's YouCut proposals.