American People Select Schock YouCut Proposal, House Republicans to Force Vote to Cut Millions by Prohibiting the Use of Stimulus Signs this Week
Over 1.3 million votes have been cast since YouCut was launched two months ago
Washington,
Jul 13 -
House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-VA) announced today that Congressman Aaron Schock’s (R-IL) proposal to prevent tens of millions of dollars from being spent on useless stimulus signs is this week’s YouCut winner.
Schock’s winning proposal would prohibit funding for any additional stimulus signs, would require agencies to report on the amount already spent on signs and would recapture those funds for taxpayers by reducing the agencies administrative expenses by an amount equal to that spent on signs. The House will vote on Schock’s bill later this week.
“Reports have stated these signs can cost taxpayers up to $10,000 and my home state of Illinois has spent over $650,000 on these signs,” said Schock. “That’s roughly $20 million spent nationwide, without creating one single job. Despite being sold as an infrastructure improvement package, less than 8 percent of these funds went to infrastructure projects, and to add insult to injury, $20 million of that is going to signs. This is outrageous. We don’t need to spend taxpayer money on propaganda.”
“We need to stop this runaway spending in Washington and start cutting,” Schock continued. “Through the YouCut program, taxpayers can say ‘enough is enough’ and vote to cut these wasteful dollars. In fact, over 1.3 million citizens already have. I’m grateful to the public for selecting my proposal and it’s time Washington listens and stops future generations from having to shoulder mountains of debt.”
“This week’s winner, a proposal developed by Aaron Schock, was an idea that we saw from dozens of email submissions,” said Republican Whip Eric Cantor. ”These bright green signs are impossible to miss, but they don’t do anything to spur job creation or economic growth of any kind. As YouCut voter Leslie wrote, ‘it's bad enough that they wasted my kids’ money on the stimulus, but now they are wasting even more of my kids money to brag about it.’ To make matters worse, no information exits as to how much all of these signs cost taxpayers, but reports indicate that potentially tens of millions of dollars have been spent. This week’s proposal would eliminate funding of the signs and require federal agencies to not only report the costs of the signs, but also find their own administrative cuts to recapture the funds.”
Each week, YouCut offers the public a list of five proposals aimed at reducing government spending. In turn, participants may vote for the one proposal that they would most like to see addressed by Congress. The following week, House Republicans will force a vote on the House Floor on whether or not to take up and debate the top vote getter selected by the public.
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