Stimulus spending finally starts to trickle down

[RamboLiberal]

Source: USA Today

In Indianapolis last month, a state government official named Jacob Sipe finally got the news he'd been anticipating. The U.S. Treasury had approved $164 million to finance affordable housing projects left paralyzed by the credit crisis, using funds from the Obama administration's increasingly controversial fiscal stimulus.

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From Indiana rental units to a Colorado energy company and workers' paychecks everywhere, the stimulus is just beginning to make itself felt. In its short history, the program has emerged as ground zero of a running debate on the future of the badly damaged U.S. economy. The role of government, the societal cost of prolonged joblessness, the danger to future generations of an ever-larger public debt — they all come together in the hard-fought clash over the efficacy and wisdom of the stimulus.

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In Boulder, Colo., Blake Jones, president of Namaste Solar, says the stimulus saved about 15 jobs at his small manufacturer. A $3 billion Treasury Department program converted an existing tax credit for solar investments to a direct payment, prompting commercial customers who no longer could benefit from a tax credit to go ahead with projects.

"The outlook was very bleak. … Now we're anticipating not losing business, but we may continue growing," Jones said.

While critics complain that the stimulus has been slow out of the gate, Summers says the administration always planned for the stimulus to work over a two-year period. So far, the modest economic boost from the government coffers has been overwhelmed by other developments. Oil prices have risen from roughly $35 a barrel in February to just under $60 today, draining more than $165 billion from the economy on an annual basis. Partly in response, the July reading of consumers' expectations for the future took its biggest dive since October.



Read more: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2009-07-13-recession-economic-stimulus_N.htm?loc=interstitialskip

[OhioChick]

1. I'm feeling a trickle and it's not good. n/t

[dysfunctional press]

2. don't trickle down on me and tell me it's raining...

[Better Believe It]

3. I remember Reagan's "trickle down" economic theory.

I don't want anyone trickling on me!

:)

[No Elephants]

8. Remember? We've nothing else since Reagan beat Carter, with a couple of

exceptions. Ronnie's trickle down economics and de-regulation and those of his successors got us exactly where we are today, whether it is Bernie Madoff or Goldman Sachs or mortgage backed derivatives or chemical and hormone ridden foods.

[happygoluckytoyou]

4. DONT GET TRICKLED ON... wear your pith helmet....! !

[angstlessk]

5. see, the MSM says 'trickle down'..and immediate knee jerk reaction is REAGAN

and his trickle down crap...NOT THE SAME THING..THIS IS DIRECT PAYMENTS TO WORKERS AND SMALL BUSINESS....NOT TAX CUTS TO THE RICH in hopes it will 'trickle down'...

[truedelphi]

7. Only problem being, a major hole in the thinking that put together this

First stim package.

Many projects take two to five years - and the way these initial payments are structured, you are only getting assurances of eighteen months of payments.

Some state constitutions do not allow the state to pick up any monies from the Federal Government unless the entire package of project spenidng is covered. For instance, Oregon will probably have to turn down monies from the stim, as their constitution specifices that the whole project must be covered, not just the first eighteen months.

[babylonsister]

6. Thank you! Good news that so many want to ignore. nt

[Javaman]

9. Namaste?

a lost fan I see.