A helpful new tool for stimulus tracking
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Stacey Vanek-Smith: The $819 billion stimulus bill heads to the Senate today. A version passed in the House last week with no Republican votes. Senators are busy retooling it in an effort to gain bi-partisan support.
President Obama told NBC this morning the bill is in for major changes:
President Obama: I am confident that by the time we actually have the final package on the floor that we are gonna to see substantial support, and people are gonna say this is a serious effort, it has no earmarks, we’re gonna be trimming out things that are not relevant to putting people back to work right now.
Lots of political wrangling expected this week — after all, $819 billion is a lot of cash, and Uncle Sam has been throwing around a lot of taxpayer money lately. So you might be wondering where it’s all going. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget hopes to answer that question with a new tool called “Stimulus Watch.” Danielle Karson explains.
Danielle Karson” Stimulus Watch lays out dozens of federal initiatives launched since December to deal with the economic crisis. Just click and scroll to “Takeovers of Small Banks,” or “Loans to Automakers.” It shows how much the government has allocated and spent so far.
Maya MacGuineas: When we are dealing with putting unprecedented amounts of money into the economy, adding transparency is critical. So it’s really helpful to try to centralize all this information in one place.
That’s committee president Maya MacGuineas. She says the table also lets you filter each initiative into bite-size pieces — like its economic target, who the program will help.
MacGuineas: There’s categories for consumers, financial institutions, and you can look at these things and see who is getting how much money.
Stimulus Watch will be constantly updated. MacGuineas says it’s already getting lots of hits from the public and policymakers.
In Washington, I’m Danielle Karson for Marketplace.
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