The bizarre thing about this example of taxpayer abuse is our government's justification for it: "
Jordan wrestles with unemployment and rising inflation." As if those things aren't happening here!
Small-Business Initiative Gains Momentum, More MoneyBy Steve Peacock,
U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor, May 16, 2011
A project aimed at helping small- and medium-sized businesses to compete globally has attained success, but the federal government says more funds are needed to “sustain the current momentum in creating jobs and increasing revenues, exports, and investments.â€
This momentum, it should be noted, is gaining in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Deloitte Consulting, LLP (formerly Bearing Point) has helped the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to achieve “impressive results†in the first four years of the Jordan initiative, known as the Sustainable Achievement of Business Expansion and Quality, or SABEQ, project. According to an Action Memorandum to the Assistant Administrator that U.S. Trade & Aid Monitor located via routine database research, those results include the creation of more than 30,000 jobs while increasing targeted industry revenues by more than a half-billion dollars.
“Additional support is needed to fully capitalize on this momentum to drive forward the impact on Jordan’s economy and, in particular, on growth of its private sector, particularly important as Jordan wrestles with unemployment and rising inflation,†the document says.
Consequently, George Laudato, the USAID Administrator's Special Assistant for the Middle East, on May 11 approved the request, thereby raising the previously established $69.2 million contract-ceiling by $4 million for the project’s final year.
