Red tape snarls arrival of stimulus spending

The scene is one familiar to anyone who watches TV medical dramas.

The monitor goes flat, the doctor rubs some sort of goop between a couple of paddles and yells "Clear!"

The patient's chest thrusts upwards and, depending on the plot line, the unfortunate soul either revives or passes into the great beyond.

The popular conception that the paddles shock the heart back to life is wrong, of course; it actually stops the heart so the natural beat can return on its own.

It seems that Washington got it wrong as well. Rather than providing just enough stimulus so natural economic forces could take over, it sent massive amounts of money out into the countryside, but left enough federal red tape in place that the patient is in danger of being long dead by the time any stimulation arrives.

An example is new funding for an old weatherization program that has been in place for more than 30 years.

Nebraska and about 40 other states have received about half of the $5 billion alloted for weatherization from the $787 billion stimulus package.

But with summer fix-up season drawing rapidly to a close, many weatherization programs are bogged down while waiting to find out what Washington will allow them to pay workers.

Although the U.S. Department of Energy says states should go ahead and get the work started, local agencies are leery of taking that advice, awaiting a ruling from the U.S. Department of Labor on whether the programs have to follow the Depression-era Davis-Bacon Act, which requires contractors to pay prevailing wages.

"Go ahead and hire the people to do the work," federal officials told the local programs. "You can just pay back wages later if we tell you to do so."

We don't blame the locals for balking at that advice. Can you imagine the bookkeeping mess?

"We've hired people and purchased equipment with the anticipation we'd be able to spend the money soon," Jackie Harpst, housing director of the Community Action Partnership of Mid-Nebraska, told The Associated Press. "And now, as we see it drag on and on, it's just very frustrating."

So it seems that many low-income residents will go through the winter with drafty windows and thin insulation.

It's not a good sign as we debate expansion of government-run health care.