6 Months of Stimulus: What We've Learned

By Christopher Flavelle, ProPublica

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act celebrated its six-month anniversary this week, and supporters and detractors alike lined up to offer their verdicts. “The Recovery Act is already paying dividends for workers, families, and small businesses,” said Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “By any objective standard, the Democrats’ trillion-dollar ‘stimulus’ isn’t working,” countered House Republican Leader John Boehner.

Well, which is it—resounding success or colossal failure? It’s too soon to tell, of course. Unemployment could keep falling, or climb again. Growth, if it comes, could be tepid. And as more money starts to flow in the fall and spring, inflation could spike – or not. Moreover, we’ll never know for sure what would have happened without the stimulus — or with a different mix of spending and tax cuts.

But there is much we do know. ProPublica looks back at six months of stimulus coverage and finds a mixed record on three key aspects of the package: how wisely the money has been spent; how many jobs have been created (and whether we’ll ever know for certain); and how well the government has met its own pledge of transparency.

You spent it on what?

Apparently it’s hard to spend three-quarters of a trillion dollars without some of the money going toward questionable-sounding projects. However, as ProPublica found over the past six months, some projects seemed silly only until closer inspection; for other projects, the reverse was true.

Two weeks after the stimulus passed, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said the plan was “larded with wasteful pending,” citing a magnetic levitation train to Disneyland and $140 million for “something called volcano monitoring.” As ProPublica reported, the fantastic-sounding train was a fancy way of describing high-speed rail in California, while volcano monitoring referred to funding for the U.S. Geological Survey for construction and repair projects, including volcano monitoring systems.

In March, ProPublica reported that stimulus money would be spent on new skylights for a state-run liquor warehouse in Montana. But wait: The money was part of an energy-conservation program, and the new skylights would save the state money on the cost of running the building. Some projects may have deserved snickers: Stimulus money also went to 22 concrete toilets at the Mark Twain National Forest in Missouri, new vinyl walls for restrooms in Rose Lodge, Oregon, and renovated bathrooms at the McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas.

In May, Republican Sen. Tom Coburn joined the fray, releasing a list (PDF) of 100 stimulus projects that he called “questionable.” Among the highlights: a guardrail for a dry reservoir in Oklahoma, a homeless grant for a New York suburb with no homeless, and an underpass for turtles in Florida. It also noted that we highlighted a report that the Social Security Administration sent 10,000 checks to dead people. The administration responded that the report was full of inaccuracies.