Tag: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009

That was fast. Faced with complaints that states didn't have the resources to properly track federal stimulus dollars, the feds have released more funds for states to hire accountants and auditors and set up offices and websites.

As an Obama-era Gordon Gekko might put it to shocking effect: "Government spending is good." The enormous "government handout" that is the stimulus package is encouraging growth of emerging industries and doing so partly by bringing major private-sector investors on board. The development puts the lie to the simple dichotomy drawn in the last few decades between the market and the government and to pretend incompatibility of the two. Unabashed taxing and spending is looking pretty good for business -- and not just the businesses in need of bailout. The stimulus is stimulating major U.S. companies to actually make things and build industries that will pay dividends well into the future.

State officials in charge of spending federal stimulus money are scrambling to spend it and to spend it right. The Obama Administration has told the states to either spend the funding fast -- in order to get the economy pumping again -- or they're going to take it back.

In a story on Obama's first 100 days, Market Watch quotes Colorado pollster Floyd Ciruli, who says Obama's high marks are "mostly for effort so far." "There's no sense in Colorado that there's economic payoff." But a quick scan of the Web today suggest it's only a matter of time before Colorado begins to feel the effects of the attention the Obama Administration has been lavishing on the state.

Winds of change may be blowing through Golden today — underscoring just how critical Colorado has become on the national clean-energy front — but the real test of the Obama administration’s legacy is unfolding in Washington.

A federal watchdog lambasted a U.S. Dept. of Agriculture Rural Utility Service effort to expand broadband Internet service to rural communities for "irregularities" in the $5.7 billion loan program.

With its stimulus spending, the Obama administration is looking to do two main things: put people to work immediately and create jobs for the future. The best stimulus projects do both. A proposal being floated in Colorado Springs by a nonprofit counseling group called Pike's Peak Behavioral Health puts its increasing population of military veteran clients and patients to work now with plans for work in the future, and has the added benefit of making something useful of foreclosed apartment projects around the state.

The Denver Post reported Saturday that the $400 million in federal stimulus funds Colorado will be spending in the next year or so on roads will be used to pay for work on "small jobs" instead of on "tackling the state's most pressing roads needs," like expanding I-70. The Post's regretful story has the tone right but the reasoning wrong, evincing the same kind of shortsightedness that dogs the stimulus program in general.

Market watchers are celebrating every minor improvement on still-woozy Wall Street trading floors in sharp contrast to Middle America which continues to reel from worsening jobs reports. Is the recent bell-clanging rejoicing coming from daily stock reports really worth the ticker tape they're printed on or should we be looking for a more accurate indicator of our nation's economic fortunes? Zach Carter at The Media Consortium Economic News Ladder pulls it all together with must-read stories from The Nation and Salon.

Senate lawmakers on the left and right came together Thursday to fund more schools in Denver, passing Senate Bill 256. It was a remarkable feat but it may be overshadowed by the big-time poker game the Joint Budget Committee began dealing out Wednesday, which could cost already strapped higher education in the state roughly $400 million. The committee threatened to cut $300 million in state funds, which would automatically disqualify Colorado for $100 million more in federal stimulus cash.