Michelle Malkin posted an article at Townhall.com about the fact that nearly 4,000 stimulus recipients received $24 billion in Recovery Act funds — while owing more than $750 million in unpaid corporate, payroll and other taxes. 

When confronted with this information, the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board pointed out that federal law does not prevent tax delinquents from receiving government contracts or grants. 

The article further reports:

“Even if such a prohibition existed, you can’t count on the IRS to perform due diligence on behalf of the American taxpayer, either. Last week, the Treasury Department inspector general found that the tax police have failed to prevent fraud in the stimulus law’s energy tax credit program. Some $6 billion in stimulus energy credits for homeowners have been claimed — but the inspector general’s audit found that 30 percent of credit-claimers had no record of homeownership. “I am troubled by the IRS’s continued failure to develop appropriate verification methods for distributing Recovery Act credits,” the Treasury Inspector watchdog said.”

The article also points out that the stimulus program actually cost jobs in some cases–many private sector jobs were crowded out by public jobs and programs.  Generally speaking, when the government gets bigger, the private sector gets smaller.  The stimulus program was further proof of that.  There is no way we can ever recover the money spent on the stimulus, but let’s be a little more careful about throwing money around in the future.