GE gets hefty federal grants in spite of laying off U.S. Employees

By Catholic Online
10/12/2010
Catholic Online (www.catholic.org)

Energy giant gets $24.9 million despite laying off as much 18,000 workers

United States President Barack Obama, along with Vice President Joe Biden awarded General Electric, or GE $24.9 million in grants from the $787-billion economic "stimulus" law that the president signed into law in February of 2009. The money was awarded to the energy giant in spite of it laying off as much as 18,000 of its U.S. workers last year.

When asked by CNSNews.com if the grants led to the hiring of more U.S. employees, GE spokeswoman Anne Eisele said 'I'm afraid I must politely decline to comment,' in an e-mail response.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - According to Standard & Poor's, GE took in $156 billion in revenue last year.

GE was the primary recipient of 14 stimulus grants, a spokeswoman for Recovery.gov confirmed to CNSNews.com. Recovery.gov is the administration's Web site that tracks stimulus expenditures. These 14 grants provided GE with the $24.9 million in tax dollars.

On four additional stimulus grants, the primary recipient of the federal money hired GE as a contractor.

At the end of 2008, GE employed 152,000 U.S. workers -- but at the end of 2009, it employed only 134,000 U.S. workers -- a decline of 18,000 workers.

Of the grants, the Energy Department provided GE with 9 stimulus grants, the Department of Health and Human Services provided the company with 3, and the Justice Department and the Commerce Department each gave the company 1 stimulus grant.

All of these federal stimulus grants went to GE's Global Research Center. The earliest of the these grants went to GE in July 2009 and the latest in April 2010.

When asked by CNSNews.com if the grants led to the hiring of more U.S. employees, GE spokeswoman Anne Eisele said "I'm afraid I must politely decline to comment," in an e-mail response.

What then, did all the money to GE go for? Recovery.gov posts brief explanations of each grant. For example, the Department of Justice gave GE $999,955 in stimulus money. "The goal of this program," said Recovery.gov, "is to develop a comprehensive reasoning system for event and scenario recognition for an intelligent video system."

In addition to stimulus grants, GE was also awarded $5 million in federal contracts under the economic stimulus law. These contracts were payment for services provided by the company.

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Keywords: General Electric, layoffs, federal grants, contractors

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1 - 7 of 7 Comments

Steve
2 years ago
Your tax dollars hard at work, rewarding a company for laying off Americans and enabling them to build a nice new shiny building in China, yay.
Cyril
2 years ago
I am sure that President Obama and his administration was not giving GE this money to lay off employees, but as usual this site will turn anything that happens into a major fault with the President's attempte to bring back our economy. Why can't this site place more of the blame for this layoff to the company? Blame the Democrats as usual. As some on this site try to tell us that the positions taken are not for the conservative republican catholics political party.
Rob
2 years ago
Sadly, you cannot point to any multi-national corporation that has not outsourced jobs to overseas markets. They all do it, thus our decimated manufacturing sector. Corporations focus is on the bottomline. If they can make the same product for pennies on the dollar outside of the country, they are going to do it. It doesn't have anything to do with Obama, Bush etc.
Miss Marie
2 years ago
I would have no problem with the grants if the funds were being used to secure jobs and increase the future prospects of prosperity in the United States. Employee layoffs here and new facilities and contracts for overseas employees does not achieve that. I am opposed to taxing my unborn great-grandchildren for moving those prospects to other countries. I am also unconvinced that GE was awarded the federal contracts on merit, rather, I believe it was awarded based their level of political support.
Rob
2 years ago
Honestly, I doubt that has nothing to do with it. GE is one of the largest and most diverse corporate conglomerates in the world. I don't doubt that they qualified for the funds they received.

But I don't have any misconceptions that we don't have objective media anymore. There isn't one outlet in my opinion that doesn't have it's slant.
vance
2 years ago
It's ashame that the article did not include that GE and its NBC TV Corp. contributed heavily to the 2008 Obama and Democrat Party campaigns. NBC is a strait up Democrat Party propaganda media. They make no secret of it. Now does it make sense as to why GE received grants from the $1.7 Trillion dollar stimulus bill the Democrats rammed through against the will of the people.This by the way is why the Tea Party Movement happened.
Rob
2 years ago
If layoffs and outsourcing of employees was any condition of receiving stimulus funds, I don't think any large corporation would be eligible.

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