In his visit to Manchester, N.H., Biden said the program already had retrofitted 200,000 homes and would meet its ambitious goals of nearly 600,000 homes by March 2012.He called it "one of our signature programs" under the stimulus law, saying that "thousands of construction workers across the country are now on the job making energy-saving home improvements that will save working families hundreds of dollars a year on their utility bills."
What Biden failed to mention:
_In Alaska, the program has yet to retrofit one home.
_In Texas, auditors found the private contractor earning the most in stimulus money did shoddy work on 60 percent of the houses it was hired to weatherize.
_In California, a contracting company paid nearly $3 million to caulk low-income residents' homes didn't train two dozen of its employees, the state's inspector general found last week.
Just months ago, at the one-year anniversary of the stimulus law, the Energy Department's inspector general complained in a report about "little progress" weatherizing homes and said the government's best efforts "appeared not to have significantly increased the tempo of actual units weatherized across the nation."
And it goes on and on and on
Biden touted the program's successes at the home of Lynn Dumont, a single mother of two who said she looks forward to seeing her heating bills lowered. But, in an awkward moment, he didn't exactly win her ringing endorsement.
While she said she was thrilled to have the vice president over, when asked whether she voted for him, there was a long pause.
"Did I vote for him?" she said. "I'd rather not say."
