Obama's Pet Power Plant Gets Stimulus Cash

(Newser) – When the stimulus was in the works, President Obama went to great lengths to show he was sacrificing his top pet project—a clean-coal power plant to be built in Illinois—on the altar of fiscal responsibilities. “It shows that we’re serious,” a rep for Nancy Pelosi said at the time. “There will not be earmarks in this bill.” But the plant is getting stimulus cash after all—$1 billion of it, Politico reports.

The administration insists this wasn’t an earmark, because the bill doesn’t specifically carve out money for FutureGen by name. It just happens to be the only “shovel-ready” project to fit certain narrow criteria in the bill. Critics, like Sen. Tom Coburn, say the plant’s administration backers and lobbyists made sure that was the case. “FutureGen is the most expensive earmark in history,” says the Oklahoma Republican.

He gonna do what he gonna do anyway! We DON'T have a say in anything, NOW that so many people put(or made a mistake) his ass in office! JMO

This is wrong on so many levels.

Explain...

Yea, you don't have to earmark anything, just write a check to whomever, because the stimulus money is for whatever. Oy, if they'd just give the money to the tax payers, all this crap would be over already.

"It just happens to be the only “shovel-ready” project to fit certain narrow criteria in the bill"

Convenient huh? I Hate this guy! he's worse then Dikc Cheney. Anyone remember what happened in 1979 with inflation? the same thing is gonna happen again because of what this moron is doing by borrowing and throwing all this money away on nonsense. Interest rates are gonna skyrocket thanks to him. obama=Douche bag IMO.

you want an honest opinion here

it does not really matter

there are too many people in this country that are too lazy to care

thus making those that do care of little or no influence

i have been pointing out govt corruption and the take over of the rights of the people for over 30 years

and frankly what good has it done

the majority of the people in this country deserve what the govt is giving to them now and what they will be given in the future

i would not doubt that in 20 years or less you will need a pass of some kind to travel from state to state yes it is illegal for that to happen but who is gonna stop it

welcome to what 100 years of complacency and 40 years of a throw away society has brought you

Is the OP related to this at all?

Congress is voting on the big energy bill next week. But the latest version of the energy bill would repeal a key part of the Clean Air Act 1—arguably the most important environmental law in American history.

Big coal companies want to revoke President Obama's authority to crack down on global warming pollution from their dirty power plants—and they're on the verge of winning.

If they succeed, the oldest and dirtiest coal plants could keep destroying the climate for years to come. And this change could pave the way for 100 new coal plants, which would pollute our communities with smog, soot, mercury, and global warming pollution.

How did this happen? For years, George W. Bush refused to use the Clean Air Act to cut global warming pollution. But the Obama administration has taken the first steps toward changing that, so the coal industry is desperate to take away Obama's authority to limit global warming pollution. Now, coal lobbyists have forced a terrible provision into the new energy bill—which otherwise has some good parts—to give coal plants a pass.

If the coal industry wins, Obama would be powerless to stop hundreds of old, dirty coal plants from spewing global warming pollution into our air. Some of the biggest climate polluters on the planet would be let off the hook.

Even worse, the coal industry is trying to build at least 100 more dirty coal plants. For years, local environmental groups and the Sierra Club have blocked these plants. But if this Clean Air Act provision is eliminated, local groups may be unable to stop another generation of dependence on dirty coal.

what good does craking down on green house gas emmissions if the company can move over seas to make products without the regulations (they still affect the same ozone layer)and import the products

Who wants to live in a town with that pollution? Granite City, IL, is near me. The steel plant there has terrible pollution. It eats the paint off of cars. I can drive by that place with the car windows up and the vent off and my child still gets an asthma attack from it.

First of all, Obama promised to stop earmarks, then puts one of the biggest pork projects in his political backyard.

Next, we need to stop polluting by producing electricity with coal. The initial cost is cheap but the side effects, such as pollution, are huge. He should have sent that billion dollars into a synfuel plant that makes gasoline from coal (World War II technology) to get the bugs out of the system so we could build more.

We have a lot of coal and we need to develop ways to convert it to asphalt, plastics, clean burning fuel, etc. Coal fired power plants are what China is using now.

Obama promised to use technology to push us into the future. This billion dollars is being spent to do the exact opposite and it is because of political pressure from special interest.

There is no such thing as "Clean Coal" technology. All it does is turn something filthy into something less filthy.

There is enough wind, sun and clean nuclear power available. No real need to even consider coal as a source.
Wonder how much BHO gets back from the pork?

global warming is a whole bunch of crap !!

I guess that most of the scientists are dummies then.

It's a whole 'nother topic, but there are scientists on both sides.

Either way, every action we take has an impact on the environment - global warming or not. i personally believe global warming/climate change/whatever they conveniently call it next is a hoax, but I also understand that there are environmental costs in everything we do and we should be as responsible, as is logically and economically feasible, as possible to minimize those impacts. i.e. I believe everyone should recyle and conserve, but I'm not going to use one, two, or even just 3 sheets of toilet paper at a... sitting, i guess... to conserve.

as stated by metalwing, clean coal is a farce. There is no such thing and there are far more uses for coal besides power. a billion dollars would build a very large wind field or even a solar field. it's pretty windy outside chicago from my understanding, it may be a better idea to go that route instead of coal. My personal opinion is that power should not be subsidized but I feel a wind farm is the lesser of two evils, unless there is the additional capital to go nuclear, which is far more efficint.

this is just another "change" that is eerily similar to old policies. Good to see deception is still alive and well in Washington.

Why do I have to keep bringing this up. Earmarking money is the way they set it up for funds to go to a certain place. Not all earmarks are bad.

Pork on the other hand does seem to be a bad thing and Obama did say something about pork but he cannot say that he will not have earmarks because they are necessary to assign funds to almost all programs.

Earmarks are provisions appropriated for individual projects and/or districts. Pork is an appropriation brought in for the sole purpose of bringing that money in to fund the district or a project in that district.

They're one and the same. plain and simple. there is that very faint distinction, but if a project has been proposed for a power plant in illinois, i doubt anyone but those in that area are really going to give a s*it about it.

It's pork/earmarks. Face it. He's a politician. Lying is second nature to him. Just like the stimulus bill, just like the appropriations bill. It's never going to stop.

Also, I believe the federal government has no reason to be funding individual projects that local/state governments should be handling. If there's any wonder why we'll hit $2T this year in debt, it's crap like this that will do nothing for the nation.

I guess anyone can call an earmark pork if they want to but the distinction is very clear. Not all earmarks are pork and not all pork are earmarks.