Slicing Up the Senate's Stimulus

I've completed entering and breaking down the Senate's version of the Stimulus in spreadsheet format. You can find the entire PDF version of the bill here. My spreadsheet is here.

I've broken down the Senate version a bit differently than I did the House version. I wanted to simplify my own breakdown a bit. My summary breakdown is as follows:

THE BREAKDOWN

1. Government Overhead & Administration $14,180,545,000 3.37%
2. Direct Economic Stimulative Spending $59,877,029,000 14.23%
3. Increase in Non-Economically Stimulative Government Programmatic Spending $88,863,250,000 21.12%
4. Potentially Stimulative Loans/Grants $251,626,986,000 59.80%
5. Indeterminate "Slush Fund" Monies $6,245,473,000 1.48%

TOTAL $420,793,283,000

THE DESCRIPTIONS

As you can see, we've still got a substantial amount of money that is allocated purely to growing the government. Category 5, as an explanation, are monies where nothing but the program name was stated, with no descriptive reference as to what the money was for at all. Category 3 encompasses additional funds to government spending programs, such as extra monies for finding temporary housing for the homeless.

Categories 1, 3 and 5 at this point have to be considered as governmental programmatic spending increases that will have little to no direct stimulative impact on the economy. These three categories add up to a total of just over $109 billion, approximately 26% of the total direct spending package. While this is not the over 50% of government growing dollars that the House had allocated, it still needs to be considered as unnecessary from the standpoint of actually stimulating the economy.

In terms of the direct and immediate stimulation of the economy, Category 2 is the only category in my breakdown that effectively guarantees that spending will reach the economy directly, and with some measure of expediency. This category is, in my opinion, what constitutes the "shovel-ready" projects in the bill.

As we can see, this is a mere $59.877 billion, and only amounts to 14.23% of the total spending.

You will recognize that Category 4 is the largest category. This comprises all of the spending that is allocated as Loans, such as the Section 502 Loans allocating funds to subprime loans for housing in rural areas, or grants that need to be awarded competitively, first from the federal government to either the state or local body, then to the individuals. In many cases it is difficult to discern what in this category might stimulate the economy, particularly in the case of the $79 billion going to the states under "Education." It is really wholly undefined as to what this amount should be used for.

Potentially these funds could go to IT upgrades & computers and school renovations, and therefore eventually stimulate the economy. Potentially, however, they may go to adding school adminstrators that may or may not be necessary, in which case the economy would not be stimulated. Depending on how much goes to growing government programs, and how much goes to economically stimulative projects, the $79 billion is nearly 20% of the spending all by itself, and can drastically effect my percentage breakdowns depending on how it is allocated.

THE TIMEFRAMES

The most important portion of this bill in terms of stimulating the economy, is the meager 14.23% allocated to "shovel-ready" projects. I indicated most construction and immedately procurable equipment funds into this category. My assumption here was that these projects would be the ones ready to bid, award, and begin physical work on within the next 12 months.

My reason for allocating most of the loans and grants to category 4 was for the long duration that would be experienced before any real physical work takes place. The process in these cases would have private parties petitioning the local or state governments for funds for their "worthy projects" at which point those bodies would petition the federal government, who would then take time to make determinations and distribute funds to the state or local governments. Those bodies would then, in turn, make their distributions on a competitive grant basis as required by the bill. Overall, there could be well over a year before any of the funds are even approved for release, much less actually put into action. Everything in category 4 must be taken with a major grain of salt in this respect, as to whether it would actually help us out of recession, or if it would just happen to be there while we come out of the recession anyway.

It is my personal opinion that nothing in categories 1, 3 or 5 can be considered to stimulate the economy, and that it is all lost on increasing the size of an already inefficient behemoth of a government. Most dangerous in these increases in spending is that two or three years down the line, these increased budgets would become the new baseline for government spending, rather than "temporary increases."

CONCLUSION

There isn't much here that's going to actually stimulate the economy or help pull us out of this recession. While the bill has been pared down and edited in some places, the overall amount of spending has increased from the House version, while the amount of direct economic stimulative spending has actually decreased, both in volume and in percentage, from my original breakdown of the House version.

In that respect, this is a far worse bill than the House bill even dreamed of being.

I really think it's time that the President start looking at some new options here, as this really just continues to be riddled with non-stimulative and even wasteful spending.

I, myself, am particularly interested to see and analyze the details of what the Senate Republicans are proposing.

UPDATE: The "Bipartisan Stimulus" is the worst yet.