What was in the Porkulus Bill?

◼ Tucked into the 1,073-page stimulus bill, creates something called the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board — the RAT Board, as it’s known by the few insiders who are aware of it.

First, let’s ask ourselves how this stimulates the economy. Why include this in an emergency stimulus bill when it has nothing to do with stimulus or economics? This rule change should have come in separate debate in Congress — like so many other portions of Porkulus.

It does, however, have everything to do with Hope and Change. What the RAT Board can do, as York points out, is direct or quash investigations by Inspectors General throughout the federal bureaucracy. Until now, IGs have had independence of action in order to avoid charges of politicization (remember that word?) and to conduct probes without interference from the Department of Justice, the White House, or Congress. Now they will answer to Congress not on general performance, but on the specifics of their probes.

How did it get into Porkulus? Grassley says it wasn’t in the original bill passed in the Senate, and it suddenly appeared in the conference version. No one has claimed ownership of the RAT Board yet,

Read the rest at Hot Air