President Obama: "More than ever, faster than ever, more responsibly than ever"

Those were President Obama's words at the beginning of yesterday's Cabinet meeting on expediting stimulus spending even further.

Since I was still enroute from Lebanon where I helped monitor the recent elections, Deputy Secretary John Porcari was on hand to represent the DOT’s ongoing efforts to get stimulus funds into the economy.

Some reports have suggested that stimulus funds are not flowing as fast as claimed. That’s simply not true. These reports misunderstand where in the funding process job creation and purchases of materials and equipment occur.

In short, they overlook the moment when stimulus actually happens. It happens as soon as we make funds available to states, territories, and transit agencies.

I've said it before, but it needs to be said again:

Every time we make ARRA funds available to the states, we send an immediate signal for states to advertise contracts, and for contractors to begin hiring workers and ordering materials like steel and asphalt. And for workers to make purchases. And for steel and asphalt vendors to hire workers and make purchases.

That is economic stimulus, and all of that activity occurs before states have been reimbursed by DOT. When the states come back to DOT for reimbursement, then and only then do the funds we've made available become outlays.

But, by that time those funds have already been hard at work stimulating the American economy.

As of last week, we had made available $15.7 billion--nearly one-third of our American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds--to 4,391 projects.

Moreover, within the first 100 days of the program, the DOT made recovery funds available at nearly twice the rate as we do for some of our normal programs.

By September 1, 2009, for example, over $3 billion in transit grants will be obligated. Over a third of these funds will be used to purchase over 4,000 transit vehicles. The remainder of the funds will aid the construction or rehabilitation of transit facilities, such as bus shelters and maintenance facilities, and provide needed support for maintenance costs to keep transit systems moving people effectively.

For more examples of DOT stimulus funds at work, look no further than CNN/Money's "Meet the Stimulus Hires" or our own profile of newly rehired Brandon Nesler

Call it what you want, but when you look at the amounts we've made available to the states and territories, you'll be looking at economic stimulus.

Comments

[Raymond Looper]

If the state is getting all this money, why can't I get them to fix the Hwy in front of my house????

[Carl C. Jackson]

I live in the Seattle-Tacoma area of Washington State. I regularly use I-5 between my home in Auburn, WA and Downtown Seattle. The pavement on most of I-5 is in terrible shape; due to years of neglect, the pavement is worn down to a rough, bumpy surface that fills with water in the tire tracks. Will stimulus money be used to FULLY repair the entire stretch of I-5 in the region? Someone from the federal DOT should really take a look at how bad I-5 is.