Out of the 787 BILLION on the stimulus, only about 175 BILLION has been spent..

[ddeclue]

for people saying it hasn't helped the recession, it really hasn't been spent yet, only a small portion has.

[cbdo2007]

1. Doesn't matter to the complainers around here.....If the recession wasn't

fixed the day after Obama wrote the 787 Billion dollar check it wasn't fast enough.

[yourout]

2. My complaint with the stimulus was that it was no were near big enough.

Whatever Wall Street got should have been tripled for the Stimulus.

The stimulus is to small to do much but big enough for the Pukes to strangle us with.

[Cant trust em]

3. And even of that 175 Billion, it HAS helped the economy.

I've never heard of a practitioner say that we'd be better off without the stimulus.

[Romulox]

4. So...double digit inflation is "according to plan"?

:shrug:

[DJ13]

5. That illustrates the problem

Even as the economy has remained stagnant the money that was supposed to be used to fix it is just sitting there doing no one any good.

[TexasObserver]

6. True. It needs to be spent faster.

They are too slow getting the funds out to those shovel ready projects. I'm familiar with one that should qualify, but they've been trying to get funds since the bill passed.

[Cant trust em]

11. I've actually already received some stimulus funding for a project I'm working on. nt

[TexasObserver]

14. So you don't care that 80% of the funds are unspent?

We know $175 billion is out. It's the $612 billion that isn't which this discussion is about.

I know the Stimulus is helping. That's why I want a second stim package of equal size passed this year, but passing the package doesn't help if the administration doesn't get the money out.

You have an experience where you got some of the money, perhaps through one of the consumer programs. Great. So why would you think "hey, I got mine, what do I care about those who are still standing in line after a year?"

[Cant trust em]

19. My point is that this argument of "it needs to be spent faster" is difficult

Implementing federal projects takes time. I don't think that most people really understand the federal RFP process. Particularly since most agencies are working with their existing capacity that they had before the stimulus money was made available. Now they have $787B in additional projects to work on.

[TexasObserver]

21. For some programs, the money has gotten. For others, it hasn't.

A non profit foundation I represent holds a low income housing project as a program asset. It has a shovel ready project that qualifies for one of the programs being administered. For the past 8-9 months, the process has gone very slowly. Money that should already be out isn't.

The president is in the position to demand the money get out faster. Money spent = jobs and tax revenues produced by such jobs.

[Cant trust em]

22. Yep. Demanding usually works with the federal bureaucracy. nt

[TexasObserver]

23. It does if you're the president and it's your job to run them.

If you're going with that lame excuse, I don't have any use for your comments. Your "I got mine" attitude is what we expect from the other side of the political spectrum.

[Cant trust em]

24. That's funny, because I don't have any excuse for your comments either.

I'm realistic about how difficult it is to do this work.

It's not an "I got mine" comment, but more of the counter point to your "I know specifically of a project that hasn't received funding yet, so that means that this process isn't working" line of thinking. In fact, we're also waiting to hear back on something that we applied for over 6 months ago. That's the way this works.

Your attitude of "we expect government to work faster otherwise they're doing a crappy job" is something that I'd expect to hear from the other side of the political spectrum.

[TexasObserver]

25. If you want to keep your head in the sand, that's your choice.

This is an important topic. When only 20% of the funds passed a year ago have found their way into society, that's a major failure by OUR party. The public is sick of excuses, and yours is just another excuse that the public rejects.

If the president wants to help the economy, he'll make sure the money gets out in timely fashion. He's the president. It's his job to lead the executive. If he doesn't do his job promptly in this regard, we will lose many seats in November. Since this is lost on you entirely in your fervor to prove you're a defender of the president, you've blinded yourself to the political reality of the situation. When the president says "we need this passed to save the economy" but his administration is still sitting on 80% of the money authorized, he's helping the GOP make their case against Democrats.

You can't be as politically unaware as you present yourself.

[Cant trust em]

28. This whole conversation is a microcosm of why I find DU really frustrating sometimes

You seem to be focusing on the politics, not really about the governing and what it takes to run the country. I feel like no one knows how these projects work. There has to be an RFP written. Then organizations take time to write their applications. Then review committees go over those proposals and weed out which ones will and will not work. Clearly this is a long and drawn out process, but that's the way it works. In order to maintain accountability we need to take appropriate procedures. It's not that the administration is just sitting on the money, but it takes time and people to actually do the work. There's a difference between intent and implementation.

Could the bureaucracy work faster? Of course. I guarantee that if the President raised holy hell that things weren't getting done fast enough, it wouldn't be much more than a PR stunt. Maybe taht would be enough to take some of the political heat off. What I find really ironic is that everyone wants the government to move faster, yet also are rightly concerned that the money shouldn't be wasted or go to people's pet projects because they're politically connected.

In a great coincidence, as I am writing this post, my co-worker who has been working on a $3.7 million proposal for broadband just sent me this link below. We submitted our original proposal back in August and we're in the final stages of review now. Here's to hoping we wind up getting funded.

http://broadbandbreakfast.com/2010/01/ntia-chief-larry-strickland-urges-btop-rejects-to-reapply-reapply-reapply/

[lib2DaBone]

7. What are they waiting for.. high unemployment?

[deaniac21]

8. You forgot the rimshot.

[Hydra]

9. Any good reason it's still not spent?

It should have hit the streets within a month.

[Cant trust em]

12. It's a little more complicated than that.

First an RFP needs to be written. Then there's the bidding process. All of this takes time.

[Robb]

15. No, no, we should just drop it out of an airship

:D

[Cant trust em]

17. I was totally about to say the same thing.

It could be like a ticker-tape parade when your hometeam wins the World Series. Instead of confetti, it would be $100 bills.

[Robb]

18. Just because I think it's a terrible idea

...doesn't mean I wouldn't show up to catch me some money. :D

[Hydra]

29. Sure. A year though?

And as others have pointed out, we have projects ready and people standing around not working. 3rd reply to me was especially telling- matching funds??? This is an emergency, not a telethon!

[jesus_of_suburbia]

13. I'm assuming they are waiting till closer to the '10 elections so that

people will be happier with the direction of the economy when they go into the voting booth.

[conscious evolution]

26. One thing I have discovered

is that much of the stimulus funding requires matching funds from either the state,local or individuals trying to tap into it.Because of the sorry state of the economy most entities simply do not have the matching funds available.

[timeforpeace]

10. Which makes the calls for a second stimulus seem somewhat silly.

[bertman]

16. ". . . only about 175 BILLION has been spent . . ." And therein lies the problem.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

20. Do you care about the answer? If so...

The effect of the stimulus on GDP in future quarters has maxed out.

GDP is expressed in percentage change.

The remaining stimulus money will not be spent at a greater rate than previous spending.

Hence it will not increase quarter-over-quarter GDP.

It is not useless, of course. Were it canceled it would definitely depress future quarter-over-quarter figures.

But the stimulus' ability to positively affect economic growth is maxed out.

The comments here that the situation argues against a second stimulus are dangerously wrong.

It takes a ton of GDP increase to move the unemployment numbers. To cut even a few percent off our current unemployment situation requires a long string of quarters at very high growth rates. (7% was not unusual in the late 1990s.)

[Change Happens]

27. Link?

Thank God, if you are correct?