Texas has spent $3.7 million to weatherize just 47 homes through December under a program set up by Congress a year ago in economic stimulus legislation.

This amounts to a taxpayer cost of $78,000 per home.

A little more than $200,000 paid for materials and labor to retrofit the homes, an official said. The remaining $3.5 million was used to grow the state's housing agency so it can attempt to make as many as 56,000 low-income homes more energy-efficient by March 2012.

Top officials for the Department of Housing and Community Affairs, the administrator for the state's Weatherization Assistance Program, insist that with the bureaucratic machinery finally in place thousands of homes will be weatherized this year. Indeed, officials say hundreds more homes were improved in January. Executive Director Michael Gerber has pledged that all the money allotted to Texas will be spent and accounted for.

Our tax dollars at work.

This shows the inefficiency of the government.  Things like this show government is the problem not the solution.