Congressional Budget Office's Summary of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009
The CBO's summary is more straight forward than the Committe on Appropriation's summary and omits useless opinions like "America should lead the world in transforming the way automobiles are powered."
There's just tons of stuff in this thing. It is truly mind boggling how much money will be printed out of thin air. This article from National Review Online has a good breakdown of the bill and listed out the things that will cost more than $10 billion:
- $20.0 billion to increase the maximum benefit under the Supplemental Nutrition Assurance Program (i.e., Food Stamps)
- $18.5 billion for energy efficiency and renewable energy programs
- $20.4 billion for programs administered by the Department of health and Human Services
- $20.0 billion to renovate elementary and secondary schools
- $17.6 billion for Pell grants and other student financial assistance at post-secondary institutions
- $29.1 billion for other elementary and secondary educational programs
- $30.0 billion for highway construction
- $13.1 billion for other transportation programs
- $11.2 billion for housing assistance programs administered by HUD
- $19.5 billion (minimum, could be higher, as per Title XIII) for education grants to states
- $27.1 billion for increase unemployment benefits
- $13.3 billion to increase health insurance for unemployed workers
- $11.1 billion for “Other Unemployment Compensation”
- $20.2 billion for Medicaid and Medicare incentive payments to encourage providers to improve healthcare IT
That's only $271 billion of it. And what do we do if this doesn't work like the TARP? Spend another $800 billion?