American Morning
Stimulus cash for bridge paint, turkey and work boots
Never before has so much money gone out the door so quickly and that makes it incredibly important to track how this money is being spent.
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caption="Stimulus cash is being spent in diverse ways, such as turkey for food banks and soup kitchens."]
The $787 billion economic stimulus is starting to work its way into the economy – by most estimates, about 10 percent has gone out the door.
So where it is going? You can see for yourself on www.recovery.gov. The diverse uses of your money are, well, tantalizing.
How about $5,378,600 for Jennie-O turkey? And $16,784,000 for canned pork?
Stimulus cash for meat? Recovery.gov doesn't specify what the contracts are for, but a quick call to USDA confirmed that stimulus funds are purchasing $100 million worth of food for food banks and soup kitchens.
And for the record, USDA tells us it is paying $1.99 per pound for the pork and is also purchasing 837,936 pounds of mozzarella.
The agriculture secretary, Tom Vilsack, says "This program will help reduce hunger of those hardest hit by the current economic recession."
We found a small contract for $251 to a company called Workingman's Family Store in Huntington, West Virginia. The money is for work boots for jobs created by the stimulus package, jobs for park rangers, patrol officers and contractors.
A manager for the store told us she didn't even know the store was a recipient of stimulus funds. Because of provisions against using the stimulus this way, the Army Corps of Engineers tells us they are refunding the purchase using general funds instead.
Finally, more typical of the types of stimulus projects – we found $783,776 to paint a bridge in Fort Riley, Kansas – given to a firm called OCCI Incorporated. The bridge spans the emergency spillway of Tuttle Creek.
Watch this space. The money is starting to move.
Living the Map: 50 Jobs in 50 States
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/17/seddiqui.danie.getty.art.jpg caption="Daniel Seddiqui works at local restaurant in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 12, 2009."]
From: Livingthemap.com
I'm Daniel Seddiqui and I'm traveling all 50 states to work 50 different careers in 50 weeks.
Sound crazy? I'm on a mission to explore the diverse careers, environments, and cultures offered in America.
Join me – you may find the perfect job.
Follow Daniel's travels on his Web site
Watch Daniel Seddiqui on CNN's "American Morning" Friday 6-9 a.m. ET.
Economist: Obama's stimulus doomed to fail
[cnn-photo-caption image= http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/15/morici.peter.art.jpg caption="Peter Morici of the University of Maryland says President Obama's economic stimulus plan is doomed to fail."]
It's been five months since President Obama signed his stimulus plan in to law. It includes more than $250 billion of government spending and tax breaks meant to create jobs. Yesterday, the president said unemployment may get worse before things turn around.
Peter Morici is a professor of international business at the University of Maryland and former economic director for the United States International Trade Commission. He says President Obama’s stimulus plan is doomed to fail. He spoke to Kiran Chetry on CNN’s “American Morning” Wednesday.
Kiran Chetry: The nation’s unemployment rate hit 9.5% last month. There's debate on whether the stimulus is working and if it's working quickly enough. The White House says we are on target. But a lot of people are asking when are we going to see the effects? You, though, say it's doomed to fail. Why?
Peter Morici: The stimulus money is very badly spent. We knew the tax cuts from the Bush stimulus don't work. People are simply saving it. If you wanted stimulus to work, spend it mostly on shovel-ready projects, infrastructure, schools, hospitals, etc. But only $100 billion of the $800 billion is spent there.
Chetry: When you say shovel-ready – they found it a challenge within the administration to find shovel-ready projects, at least that’s what many are saying, in these various states. How do you get that better organized so indeed if the money is there, only 10% has gone out, they can get it to projects that are ready to go?
Morici: I'm no Republican, but what President Obama is discovering is how slow the bureaucracy moves. It's very hard to push this kind of money through the system. Also, all of the red tape that the government has created doing construction has made it very difficult. I could get the money out there. But Obama doesn't seem to be capable of getting it done. The advisers don't seem to be able to get it done. What you got to do is just hand it to the mayors and county executives and say, “You got to spend x by the end of this year.” Then give them another chunk for next year – “You got to spend that by the end of the year and so forth or you don't get to keep the money.” Most municipalities and counties have a long list of renovation projects they’re holding in abeyance because they don’t have enough cash. That’s the way to get it out. President Obama is not thinking in those terms. Instead, he beefs up the Department of Education.
"Kia-ville" the new Motor City
Deep in the middle of a recession, there's a boom town rising 80 miles from Atlanta in West Point, Georgia. Why West Point, Georgia? Because there's a thriving auto industry here. Surprised? So were we. CNN’s Alina Cho went there and found out why.
Economy could make Obama, Democrats vulnerable in 2010
[cnn-photo-caption image=http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2009/images/07/09/obama.economy.romans.art.jpg caption="President Obama maintains that investing in key areas such as health care will help stabilize the economy."]
NEW YORK (CNN) - They are two presidents from different parties but have striking similarities
Former President Ronald Reagan and current President Obama are incredibly popular, and both faced rising unemployment early on.
Reagan's experience could be instructive for Democrats today; the GOP lost 26 seats in the 1982 elections. Reagan's popularity could not trump double-digit unemployment.
If we look back at 1982, as soon as the unemployment rate hit 10 percent, there was a political dynamic that changed significantly ... and it became much harder for the incumbent party to be able to make their case," said Daniel Clifton, head of policy research at Strategas, an investment strategy and policy research firm.
But Reagan was fighting joblessness, inflation and high interest rates. Obama has a full plate, but inflation and high interest rates are not on it.
Nonetheless, the jobless rate today is at 9.5 percent, which is above the peak of 8 percent the White House predicted earlier this year. The administration now concedes 10 percent is likely in the next couple of months.
While some economists have long forecast jobless rates this high, Vice President Joe Biden now admits that the administration "misread how bad the economy was."
Not exactly, according to the president.
Job market takes turn for worse
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) - The battered U.S. labor market took a step backwards last month as employers trimmed more jobs from their payrolls in June, according to a government report Thursday.
There was a net loss of 467,000 jobs in June, compared with a revised loss of 322,000 jobs in May. This was the first time in four months that the number of jobs lost rose from the prior month.
The June job losses were also far worse than the forecast of a loss of 365,000 jobs by economists surveyed by Briefing.com.
The unemployment rate rose for the ninth straight month, climbing to 9.5% from 9.4%, and hitting another 26-year high. Economists had been expecting that the unemployment rate would hit 9.6%.
Nearly 3.4 million jobs have been lost during the first half of 2009, more than the 3.1 million lost in all of 2008.
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