Savannah River Site in S.C. Gets $1.6 Billion in Stimulus Funds for 3,100 Temporary Jobs

Savannah River Site in Aiken, S.C., gets $1.6 billion in stimulus funds for 3,100 temporary jobs, which means $500,000 per job.

The city of Aiken, S.C., got a big chunk of the stimulus funds, $1.6 billion to be exact. The money was used to create 3,100 temporary jobs to clean up the Savannah River Site in Aiken, near the Georgia state line. Of course, let us not forget that most people in South Carolina scoffed at the idea of Barack Obama being a serious contender for the presidency, much less vote for him. Also, Gov. Mark "Dirtbag" Sanford and others railed against the stimulus, saying the package would leave the state in worst shape. Wow. This is amazing, $500,000 per job. Hey, where's Georgia's big chunk? Unemployment rates are sky-high here as well. There are many people willing to launch new businesses, such as my good friend Lane Fowler, an IT whiz, who needs an infusion of cash, in the form of grants or some stimulus funds, to get his medical equipment machine built, tested and marketed.

These "jobs" seem to have staved off even higher unemployment in counties where jobless rates hover around 20 percent. Don't get me wrong, I am all for measures to cut unemployment and help us get out of this recession, but $500,000 per job is ridiculous. According to the Labor Department, the unemployment rate in South Carolina in March was 12.2 percent, the sixth highest in the country. Near Savannah River, Allendale county had the state's second-highest jobless rate at 22.4 percent, according to media reports and two other nearby counties, Barnwell and Bamberg were 19.9 and 17.7 percent respectively.

The reality is that these temporary jobs will lead to an unsustainable increase in the national debt and we will be digging a deeper hole for our children and their children. The $500,000 price tag per temporary worker reportedly covers overhead and other costs at the site. Sorry, but this is an enormous waste of our scarce dollars. The jobs are needed and why not make them permanent and at a much lower cost? How are we paying for all this? America needs to get back to being a manufacturing society and not a service society. If a portion of this $1.6 billion was used for grants to start small businesses instead of handing it to one county for terribly overpriced temporary jobs, we would could see the economy improve.

About the Savannah River Site:

The Savannah River Site is a 310 square mile site, is located in the south eastern coastal area of the United States in the state of South Carolina. It is bordered to the west by the Savannah River and Georgia, and is close to several major cities, including Augusta and Savannah (GA.), Columbia, Greenville, and Charleston (S.C.). It is in an area residents refer to as the Central Savannah River Area, or CSRA.

It is a nuclear materials processing center and the site was built during the 1950s to refine nuclear material for deployment in nuclear weapons. It is operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Savannah River Nuclear Solutions LLC.