Flow of stimulus funds still only a trickle

[JBeukema]

When the government enacted a $787 billion package of tax cuts and new spending this spring, there was much talk about how all that money would help pull the economy out of a deep recession. But readers are asking: Just how much of this money has been actually spent? Turns out the answer is not much.Confidence in the stimulus money is beginning to wane. People are still waiting for billions of dollars to reenergize the economy. … How much of the stimulus money has actually been doled out as of this week? What percentage of the total stimulus package and how many billions is that?
— Christine, Address withheld
The idea behind the government's economic stimulus package was to get money flowing through the system, boost economic activity and create jobs. But an msnbc.com review of the latest federal spending data shows that the money is flowing at a trickle.

Answer Desk: Slow stimulus spending - Answer desk- msnbc.com

 

[chanel]

But the misery is pouring down in buckets.

 

[toomuchtime_]

But the misery is pouring down in buckets.

And much of it is unnecessary. If instead of buying this nearly $800 billion barrel of pork, Obama had directly and aggressively addressed the central problem, the lack of credit for businesses and consumers, by making this money available for loans to consumers and businesses by contracting banks and other lending institutions to provide these loans on behalf of the federal government according to rules and parameters laid down by the Treasury, millions of jobs could have immediately been saved or created, saving millions of households from financial ruin, and increasing the flow of tax revenues into the coffers of the federal, state and local governments now struggling to provide basic services, and since this money would have been loaned at interest, it would have cost taxpayers nothing in the long run and perhaps would have shown a profit. As our financial system recovered enough to take over this function, the money could have been withdrawn to retire the debt that created this fund.

This would have been a government hand up to the economy instead of Obama's handout, and in the first hours after it was announced, it would have done more to ease the pain of the recession and to begin the recovery than Obama's pork barrel will have done over the next two years.