This past Sunday on Fox News, House Minority Leader John Boehner issued this stinging, but false, criticism of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:
BOEHNER: This was supposed to be about jobs, jobs, and jobs. And the fact is it turned into nothing more than spending, spending, and more spending on a lot of big government bureaucracy. In Ohio, the infrastructure dollars that were sent there months ago — there hasn’t been a contract let, to my knowledge. And the fact is is that I don’t believe it will create jobs.
Watch it:
Media Matters fact-checked Boehner’s statement, noting that the Ohio Department of Transportation had been using stimulus funds “for work on 52 projects.” On June 15, the ODOT issued a statement noting that the stimulus funds were helping to create jobs. “As contracts are awarded, construction companies begin to mobilize workers for these jobs,” the statement read.
Today, ODOT issued a new statement distancing itself from Boehner. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports:
ODOT spokesman Scott Varner called Boehner’s statement “disappointing.”
Varner noted that ODOT had just OK’d six more stimulus road projects, which will cost about $43 million.
Boehner’s office was forced to backpedal in the face of new criticism from ODOT. After initially claiming that not a single contract had resulted from the stimulus funds, Boehner issued a revised statement, complaining that “the entire process has been absurdly slow moving just as Republicans warned.”
Just last month, Boehner was touting the fact that stimulus was creating “much-needed jobs” for his state. Boehner just can’t keep his talking points straight in his feverish rush to issue political attacks against Obama.
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