On February 17, 2009 President Obama signed into law the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The stated goal of this legislation was to stimulate our economy via spending, benefits and tax cuts. The total dollar value of the bill was $787 billion.
Here we are almost precisely 11 months later. If you visit the website set up for tracking this bill at http://www.recovery.gov/ you will see that as of January 8, 2010 about $260 billion (33%) of the total has been paid out (must add 3 numbers under "overview of funding" to arrive at this).
We have a few observations: (1) Our $14 trillion economy has yet to recognize the growth associated with remaining $527 billion which is equal to over 3 1/2% of our total economy so economic growth will be supported by this in 2010 (especially the first half), (2) the private sector will need that much more recovery to continue to grow after this stimulus is fully spent, and (3) the U.S. borrowed all of the money for this stimulus and will have to repay this someday.
