The Porkulus: Let Them Eat Ham!

RUSH: The stimulus money is now showing up in great detail, and there’s so much stimulus money spent on ham, literally spent on ham. Listen to this, folks. Stimulus money, $2,531,600 for ham, water added, cooked, frozen, sliced, two pounds. This is from Recovery.gov, stimulus money awarded $1,191,200 for two pound frozen ham slice. Now, ham is pork. It’s amazing.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Tom Vilsack, who is the secretary of agriculture, has responded. Matt Drudge has on his website today all of the details from Recovery.gov of where the stimulus money has gone, and his focused a lot on how much money has been spent on ham. So Vilsack has released a statement responding to the Drudge Report. ”Through the Recovery Act, the US Department of Agriculture has made $100 million available to the states for The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP), which acquires food that is distributed to local organizations that assist the needy — including food banks, food pantries, and soup kitchens. … The references to ‘2 pound frozen ham sliced’ are to the sizes of the packaging. Press reports suggesting that the Recovery Act spent $1.191 million to buy ‘2 pounds of ham’ are wrong.

‘In fact, the contract in question purchased 760,000 pounds of ham for $1.191m, at a cost of approximately $1.50 per pound. In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese,’ but you go down to Food Lion and you can get this same stuff for 79¢ a pound. ‘In terms of the dairy purchase referenced, USDA’s Farm Service Agency (FSA) purchased 837,936 pounds of mozzarella cheese and 4,039,200 pounds of processed cheese.’ Vilsack, the secretary of agriculture thinks that he’s being a real smart guy here by saying, ‘No, no, no! We didn’t spend $2 million or two pounds of ham, we spent it on…’ That’s not the point. The stimulus plan was to put people back to work! The stimulus plan was about economic recovery. It wasn’t about buying four million pounds or whatever of processed cheese!

It wasn’t about buying ham regardless how much it cost. That’s not what the Recovery Act or stimulus or Porkulus bill was about. We’re not surprised to find it in there, folks. We were among the loudest voices trying to clamor the warning that this was all a smokescreen, that there was no recovery in this. There was nothing for jobs. The ‘highway projects’ are not happening, the ‘school repairs,’ nothing. None of the infrastructure things that were promised are happening at all.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Now, Vilsack, this press release is amazing. ‘We didn’t buy all that ham! We didn’t buy two pounds of ham for $2 million.’ This guy sounds like he’s running a deli! The secretary of agriculture sounds like he’s running a deli. Apparently what we missed in the initial sales job for the stimulus package was shovel-ready cold cuts, in addition to shovel read jobs.