South Carolina’s Comptroller General, Richard Eckstrom continues to openly criticize the $787 billion stimulus bill. Eckstrom feels that there are many reasons to be skeptical of numbers reported by Washington when it comes to “jobs saved or created.” He says he is working hard to bring accuracy to the job count of the stimulus jobs “saved or created”. “I’m continuing to work with Washington. I’ve volunteered to work on a task force. I have just continuously have taken the position that the numbers that we report are meaningless, and that we need to be able to count the job creation accurately.”
Eckstrom is hoping he can bring some influence to the process being used to count stimulus jobs. “I’m going to continue to advocate that we clean up the process, and that we go to a much more accurate, much more believable, much more dependable system for coming up with these job-creation numbers.”
Review Comptroller General’s state stimulus tracking numbers.
Eckstrom says that the country continues to spend money we don’t have and it’s all under the pretense of economic recovery. So what influence does he have? “The influence that I have is to continue to speak. If I don’t speak out, I have zero influence, but I will continue to speak and I will try to rally other states.”
When asked if he were frustrated by the reports, Eckstrom said, “Frustrated is putting it mildly. Taxpayers, I think should be really upset over this one. I think that this is a bit of a bait and switch. The bait was that the bill needed to be passed, so that the economy could be put back on tract. The switch is that the bill is passed but then the money was directed into government programs and not into the economy.”
Eckstrom doesn’t think the changes needed are going to happen overnight. “This spending will continue for a couple of years and in the months ahead we’re going to see some changes. I was told by a senior member of the White House staff last week, that the White House is going to start moving in the direction that I’m advocating.”
Eckstrom concluded by saying that we won’t be the ones repaying this debt. ”That will fall to our children and grandchildren.”
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