Across the nation, local firms can expect to lose billions of economic stimulus dollars to large multinational corporations, thanks to a government contracting scheme that puts paperwork speed ahead of community recovery.
In Montana, that means qualified building firms are out of the loop, while many millions in federal construction funding will go to a California company that recently earned a stern rebuke for its failures in Iraq - a war-profits scandal that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.
"It's a farce," said Dewey Swank of Kalispell's Swank Enterprises. "It stinks of politics and big special interests."
Of course, Obama owes a lot to those large multinational corporations that financed his campaign. And he is working hard to pay them back:
President Barack Obama originally sought $83.4 billion for the two wars and more foreign aid for countries like Pakistan.
But then he too sought more -- $4 billion extra to combat H1N1 swine flu and $5 billion to back credit lines to the International Monetary Fund, which is trying to help developing countries weather the global economic downturn.
After insisting on all this federal spending, isn't it a little late for this?
President Barack Obama sought on Tuesday to show he was serious about improving the U.S. budget picture as he called on Congress to pass new limits on tax cuts and spending programs to avoid adding to deficits.
As any student of history knows, the national debt did not explode until passage of the 17th Amendment. The only way to restore the federal government to fiscal common sense is to repeal it.
Update:
Found this video of Richard Ebeling, the former president of FEE, on Neil Cavuto making the same point, but much better than I can:
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