User:Brian McNeil/recovery.gov

= Notes from investigation into data made available on http://www.recovery.gov =

Introduction
http://www.recovery.gov is the government website where open reporting of expenditure agreed as part of the fiscal stimulus page may be publicly accessed.

From figures available in this site, a total just under $159 billion has been awarded. Of this, less than $37 billion was spent as-at the end of the third quarter of 2009.

Example - California
California is the largest recipient of recovery funding with $8.2 billion spent. The largest grant within the state is $4.4 billion, on education, and claims to have saved or created over 50,000 jobs.

An additional three awards of over $1 billion are registered as being in California; they total an awarded amount of $3.4 billion, spent-to date is $1.2 billion, and the total number of jobs claimed as created or saved is over 25,000. Again, these are awards in public education.

AARA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009)
This is the centrepiece of Barack Obama's recovery planning. Prior legislation (Economic Stimulus Act of 2008, Emergency Economic Stablization act of 2008 and the Troubled Assets Relief Program) was the result of measures taken by the administration of George W. Bush.

As reported at the bill's signing it was not for the bandied-about figure of US$ 900 billion but, for US$ 787 billion, of this US$ 268 billion was allocated for tax cuts.

Analysis of Recovery.gov
Recovery.gov allows drill-down to individual grants, loans and contracts. Each item is expected to report the number of jobs saved or created.