Alert the Press! Obama is Bailing Out Detroit!

The $300 Million Bailout That Wasn't

I have a cousin who lives in Georgia, watches Sean Hannity faithfully, and who visits websites like Breitbart.com. She posted on Facebook, the other day, her outrage over the $300 million bailout Obama was giving to "union fat cats" in Detroit. This turned out to be a story that FreedomWorks was pushing, and it came as no surprise that the story wasn't entirely true, and that it was tied to a drive by FreedomWorks, which was in deep financial doo-doo, to raise funds.

So what did we learn from all of this? First, we learned that the $300 million didn't actually involve any new funds; it was all money Detroit was slated to get anyway, money for things like hiring police officers, clearing blighted and abandoned properties (Detroit's population has declined by 25% in the last decade, which leaves a lot of abandoned houses) and transportation aid. The Obama administration merely cleared some red tape.

And how does this aid compare to the kind of aid that a red state receives? Let's look at Georgia: 31.6% of Georgia's state spending came from federal funds. $12 billion worth of federal funds. For those doing the math, that's forty times more money than $300 million. Is the federal government bailing out Georgia? You be the judge.