As of September 2009, about 14.5% of the $787B dollar stimulus package has been spent. 14.5%. That's it. This is just more proof of how inept our government has become. If you'll remember, this legislation was passed with such urgency that NOT ONE member of Congress read the bill in its entirety before voting on it. This money was supposed to be quickly directed to "shovel-ready" jobs (according to the always brilliant Harry Reid) in order to stave off the rising unemployment rates in our country; but our government is so riddled with layers and layers of bureaucracy that it can't even spend money efficiently. How f%#ked is that? Almost a year later, the urgency has disappeared as they bumble around trying to figure out how to spend it all.
Where has this money gone? Well, imagine the same morons who can't figure out how to spend money trying to track its whereabouts. It ain't happening. The best source of information I've found so far for tracking this out of control spending is Propublica. You can visit their site for a full breakdown, but looking at some of the top recipients, you'll see the following:
- Health and Human Services - $35B (Enough to have paid 350,000 people $100,000) - These guys have a junk website that's difficult to navigate, but as far as I can tell much of the money has been spent enforcing Obama's electronic record keeping initiative. Whether this will benefit our economy or not will not be known for quite some time, but for now, at least, this money has gone largely towards non-stimulus related, and sometimes downright egregious spending. We're basically outfitting our medical facilities with shiny new computer systems. This may have saved a few IT jobs in hospitals and sales rep jobs at reseller outlets, but the big recipients here are the foreign entities who manufacture most of our computer equipment.
- Department of Education - $23B - This money has been spent largely on Pell grants and school modernization. I'm not arguing that these aren't worthy things, but they have nothing to do with our immediate economical problems and have no reason to be in a federal stimulus package.
- Department of the Treasury - $1.2B - Has been spent mostly on paying people who get Social Security $250. People love free money. This will become a common theme with this blog, I'm sure. It has also gone towards Native American assistance, grants for state housing credits, and grants for people with "green" facilities. Again, not a lot of job creation or economy stimulating here.
- Department of Labor - $32B - Most of this money has been spent educating workers. This has almost no impact on job creation, and it's not the government's responsibility to educate workers.
Basically, what's happened here is that the administration has handed out (printed up) billions in cash to agencies/entities who then just spent it arbitrarily on whatever the hell they wanted. Worse yet, they've demanded no accountability so it's damn near impossible to see where all our tax money is going. Brilliant.
When all the number crunching is done, a tiny fraction (3-5% ... it's impossible to say exactly because much of the spending is unaccounted for) has actually gone towards job-creation and economy building.
"But the economy is turning around," you say. First, put down the Kool-aid. That sh%t's bad for you. Just think about it for a second. 14.5% of the total stimulus package has been spent, and only about 3-5% of that has been towards things that could actually stimulate our economy. We're supposed to believe that this tiny amount has immediately turned around one of the worst economic periods we've faced since the Great Depression? Come on! If you truly believe that, go ahead and fill out a 2012 absentee ballot for Obama because you are incapable of rational thought and clearly an ideologue.
The Congressional Budget Office predicted in February 2009 (around the time Obama was pleading for another $800B) that the economy would start to rebound by the end of 2009 whether or not Congress jammed a stimulus package down our throats (http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/102xx/doc10255/06-02-IMF.pdf). Hey look, it's the end of 2009 and the economy is starting to rebound ... even though most of the stimulus package hasn't been spent. Now who could have seen that coming?
Obama promised unemployment wouldn't top 8% if we gave him another $800B. We did, and now unemployment has topped 10%. This stimulus package has done nothing but make some people rich and devalue the hell out of the American dollar. Worse yet, to stabilize our currency, we'll likely soon experience crazy inflation and super high interest rates like we had when Carter was in office. I am a rocket scientist, but it doesn't take one to figure this out. This is common sense. Just study a bit of history ... you don't even have to go back that far so you'll likely not even miss Desperate Housewives while doing your research.
