The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (more popularly called the 2009 stimulus) turns three in mid-February. We evaluated the legislation on its first and second anniversaries; our assessment on its third is below based on four criteria: timeliness, unemployment, transparency, and preventing waste.

Timeliness. Lawmakers promised the stimulus would have a very quick impact on the economy. Then-House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC), in an MSNBC interview on Feb. 11, 2009, said improvements would been seen in as little as a week: “If we pass this package by Friday afternoon, I’m co­­­nvinced that by Friday next week, you’ll begin to see some positive stuff coming out of it…”

At the two-year mark, only 78.7 percent ($619.1 billion) of the stimulus funds had been paid out. Since last February an additional $324.7 billion in benefits (for an overall total of $743.8 billion) have been disbursed.

Still, that is almost $100 billion shy of the $840 billion that has been earmarked for the stimulus. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) “estimates that nearly 90 percent of ARRA’s budgetary impact was realized by the end of fiscal year 2011 and that the law added $733 billion to budget deficits over the 2009–2011 period.”

Since the stimulus was supposed to be a temporary two-year program, it still gets an “F” for timeliness.

Unemployment. In selling the stimulus, former White House senior advisor David Axelrod said told NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Feb. 15, 2009, “[W]ithout [the stimulus], that’s where we were looking — double-digit unemployment …” The jobless rate was 8.2 percent at the time. And former Director of the Council of Economic Advisers Christina Romer and former Economic advisor to Vice President Biden, Jared Bernstein, reported the President’s expectations for the stimulus was to create 3 million to 4 million jobs.

The stimulus didn’t keep unemployment from hitting double digits; it didn’t create jobs as quickly as promised and also has not resulted in a net increase in U.S. employment. Jobs are trickling back now – three years later – but employment growth can be characterized as tepid at best.

Since the bill was signed in February 2009, the U.S. has experienced a net job loss of 1.15 million jobs (the country has lost jobs in 16 of the 36 months since the stimulus was enacted). The unemployment rate hit 10 percent in October 2009, but has not bounced down by any stretch of the imagination; it has remained around 8 or 9 percent since then (the lowest being 8.3 percent in January 2011).

In 2009 the White House released a paper outlining the number of jobs that would be created or saved in each state. In the last year, 46 states have added jobs. To compare the predictions to the current statistics on job creation in your state, click here.

Transparency. The 2009 stimulus ranked among the all-time largest budget items.  Americans, nervous about such broad intervention, were promised the stimulus would be “transparent and accountable.” The administration even built a slick website to help track the funds.

Not much has changed here except it is worth applauding the White House for continually maintaining and updating its website – even three years later. While many in the press may not be paying attention, taxpayers still have a pretty reliable means for tracking stimulus spending.

Preventing Waste. At the bill’s signing ceremony, President Obama said, “With a recovery package of this size comes a responsibility to assure every taxpayer that we are being careful with the money they work so hard to earn.”  So he put Vice President Biden in charge of combating stimulus waste.

There is now a whole book devoted to this issue. According to a Wall Street Journal book review of “Money Well Spent” by Michael Grabell, taxpayers spent $783,000 “to study why young people consume malt liquor and marijuana,” $219,000 “to study the ‘hookups’ of college students,” and $92,000 for Army Corps of Engineers “costumes for mascots like Bobber the Water Safety Dog.”

Furthermore, the stimulus has added slightly more to deficits than initially anticipated. According to the CBO, “[T]he law added $733 billion to budget deficits over the 2009–2011 period. When ARRA was enacted, CBO and JCT estimated that it would increase deficits through fiscal year 2011 by $719 billion…”

 BA

Here’s a roundup of this morning’s must-read budget and economic stories:

Politico says 2012 will be a “do nothing year” for Congress.

Members of Congress are putting the “finishing touches” on a deal to extend the 2011 payroll tax cut and extend unemployment benefits. Votes are expected Friday. Fox News, The Hill, Los Angeles Times, Politico, Reuters, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post have the details.

Roll Call says some lawmakers are trying to the stop cuts to federal worker pensions that is currently in the payroll tax extension package.

Bloomberg and The New York Times report there is still some chance that Greece will default on its debt.

On the opinion pages: Debra Saunders says the President is not doing enough to rein in the federal budget deficit; The Wall Street Journalexplores the cost of extending unemployment benefits; and Michael Peterson argues lawmakers should use a longer time horizon than 10 years when presenting the nation’s budget outlook.

BA

The Truth-o-Meter says: Mostly False | Citing Congressional Budget Office, chamber ad says unemployment could exceed 9 percent

This ad is a positive push for business-friendly policies and politicians, brought to you by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. But in making its case, the video ad aimed at Illinois voters includes a couple of scary phrases: • 13.1 million Americans out of work • CBO: Unemployment Could Top 9 percent in 2013 We wondered if the Congressional Budget Office, a non-partisan arm of Congress that analyzes the financial impact of federal laws, is really projecting that high an unemployment rate next year. The CBO report The CBO’s ...

>> More

ContributorNetwork - COMMENTARY | Education is looking anything but golden in the state of California. As Obama fights to reform higher education, and California Governor Jerry Brown struggles to balance a deficit budget, school districts, teachers, parents and voters face some very tough decisions in the next month.

Here’s a roundup of this morning’s must-read budget and economic stories:

Fortune takes a look at which states are in the best fiscal shape.

Negotiations on extending the 2011 payroll tax cut for another full year broke through yesterday and a deal looks likely. The Hill, New York Times, Politico and Roll Call have the details.

The Washington Post says President Obama’s budget makes changes to the U.S. Postal Service, including cutting Saturday mail service.

Fox News looks at the tax increases in the President’s budget.

The Hill, Politico and Reuters report President Obama has threatened to veto a multi-billion transportation reauthorization bill that Congress is currently considering.

The Wall Street Journal says the Obama Administration will offer a plan in the coming weeks to cut the corporate tax rate in exchange for closing certain loopholes.

The New York Times previews Greece’s debt restructuring plan, to be released next week.

The New York Times also looks at Portugal’s debt problems.

On the opinion pages: The Wall Street Journal likes the progress on the payroll tax cut deal.

BA

Politico - Opinion: The president's 2013 fiscal proposal ignores reality.

In its budget submitted to Congress on February 13, the Obama administration zeroed out funding for NASA’s future Mars-exploration missions. The Mars Science Lab Curiosity, currently en route to the Red Planet and the nearly completed small MAVEN orbiter, scheduled for launch in 2013, will be sent, but that’s it. No funding has been provided for the Mars probes planned as joint missions in 2016 and 2018 with the European Space Agency, and nothing after that is funded either. This poses a grave crisis for the American space program.

NASA’s Mars-exploration effort has been brilliantly successful because, since 1994, it has been approached as a campaign, with probes launched every two years, alternating between orbiters and landers. As a result, combined operations have been possible, with orbiters providing communication links and reconnaissance guidance for surface rovers, which in turn can conduct investigations on the ground to verify and calibrate orbital observations. Thus, the great treks of the rovers Spirit and Opportunity, launched in 2003, were supported from above by Mars Global Surveyor (MGS, launched in1996), Mars Odyssey (launched in 2001), and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO, launched in 2005). But after serving ten years in orbit, MGS is now no longer operating, and if we wait until the 2020s to resume Mars exploration, the rest of the orbiters will be gone as well. Moreover, so will be the experienced teams that created them. Effectively, the whole program will be completely wrecked, and we will have to start again from scratch.

Keep reading this post . . .

In a town where bipartisan budget chicanery has been raised to an art form, President Obama’s latest budget proposal should be hailed as the da Vinci of fiscal obfuscation.

The president claims that his budget proposal reduces debt by $4 trillion over the next 10 years, combining $2.4 trillion in spending cuts with $1.6 trillion in tax hikes. Almost none of that is true.

Keep reading this post . . .

AP - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress Tuesday that the president's new $3.8 trillion spending plan would impose new taxes on only 2 percent of the nation's wealthiest families and the alternative would be to seek more painful cuts in other government programs such as defense, Social Security and Medicare.

AP - Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress Tuesday that the president's new $3.8 trillion spending plan would impose new taxes on only 2 percent of the nation's wealthiest families and the alternative would be to seek more painful cuts in other government programs such as defense, Social Security and Medicare.

AP - Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the nation's top military leader on Tuesday defended the Pentagon's slimmed-down, $614 billion budget, telling lawmakers it's time to show Congress is serious about reducing the deficit.

According to the Economist, when given three options 50%, of adults prefer to cut the budget deficit by cutting government spending; 10% prefer increasing taxes; and 33% prefer a combination of both.

According to ABC/Washington Post, 24% of adults are enthusiastic about the way government works, 22% are satisfied, 49% are dissatisfied; and 26% are angry.

Reuters: 32% of adults think the country is headed in the right direction, down from 38% in January 2011. 62% think it is headed in the wrong direction, up from 57% one year ago.

According to ABC/Washington Post, 0% of adults would rate the economy as excellent. Only 11% would say it is in good shape, 46% would say it is in not so good shape, and 42% would say it is in poor shape.

 BA

Daily Caller - On Sunday’s “Meet the Press” on MSNBC, White House Chief of Staff Jacob Lew explained away the Senate’s then-1,019-day failure to pass a budget by misleading viewers on Senate rules.

Reuters - President Barack Obama's 2013 election-year budget took investors by surprise with a call for significantly higher taxes on dividends, a major change from his earlier tax proposals and one that will raise the ire of dividend-paying companies.

Here’s a roundup of this morning’s must-read budget and economic stories:

Bloomberg says lawmakers are girding for a fight over the budget deficit this election year.

President Obama came out with his fiscal year 2013 budget outline yesterday. CNN Money, Bloomberg, The Hill, The New York Times, Politico (here too), The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The Washington Times have the details.

The New York Times has an infographic explaining the budget release.

According to The New York Times, the President’s budget wouldn’t have as much as it claims. Bloomberg says the President’s budget may overestimate economic growth rates.

The Hill and The Washington Post note Defense Secretary Leon Panetta will be up on Capitol Hill for the next three days to discuss potential cuts to defense spending.

The Hill, The New York Times, Politico, Roll Call and The Washington Post report Republicans have agreed to extend the payroll tax cut for a full year without looking for offsets.

Politico says one Republican senator is blocking debate on the $109 billion transportation reauthorization.

USA Today reports Moody’s has a “negative” outlook for France’s debt situation.

BA

WASHINGTON -- Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is defending his department's slimmed-down, $614 billion budget plan, telling senators it's time to step up and show they are serious about reducing the deficit.

In testimony prepared for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday, Panetta is warning lawmakers that budget cuts will hit all 50 states. But he says the reductions have been carefully planned and there is little room for changes.

Panetta and Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, can expect to meet resistance from lawmakers who have expressed reservations about gutting defense and eroding the country's national security. The proposed defense budget for the year beginning Oct. 1 includes $525.4 billion in base spending and another $88.5 billion for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The total is nearly $32 billion less than this year's budget.

"It was this Congress that mandated, on a bipartisan basis, that we reduce the defense budget, and we need your partnership to do this in a manner that preserves the strongest military in the world," Panetta said in the written testimony, which was obtained by The Associated Press. "This will be a test of whether reducing the deficit is about talk or action."

Defense officials have laid out plans to find about $260 billion in savings over the next five years, including moves to slash the size of the Army and Marine Corps, cut back on shipbuilding, and delay the purchase of some fighter jets and other weapons systems.

The plan also slashes war spending. Money for Iraq and Afghanistan will drop from $115 billion this year to $88.5 billion, with less than $3 billion spent for security in Iraq. It also cuts in half the amount spent on training and equipping Afghanistan's security forces – a key element to the U.S. effort to gradually withdraw forces and transfer security responsibility to the Afghans.

While military personnel still would get a 1.7 percent pay raise, retirees would get hit with a series of increases in health care fees, co-pays and deductibles. The impact would be greater on those who are under 65 and are likely to have another job, as well as on those who make more money.

Senators on Monday also complained that President Barack Obama and his defense team have made no plans to deal with an additional $492 billion in across-the-board military cuts that will occur in January 2013 if Congress doesn't act to avoid them.

Panetta said that since it is now apparent what the current cuts will do, he hopes that Congress will be persuaded to avoid the additional 2013 reductions.

Dempsey, in his written testimony, said that even though there are fewer than 90,000 troops deployed in combat, compared with more than 200,000 just two years ago, the military must spend money to reset and restore itself. War-torn equipment must be replaced, weapons need to be modernized and troops need to be retrained, he said.

"We will have to do all of this in the context of a security environment that is different than the one we faced 10 years ago," Dempsey said. "We cannot simply return to the old way of doing things, and we cannot forget the lessons we have learned."

The Week - The president's polarizing spending plan is dead on arrival in Congress, critics say. But it's still triggering plenty of debatePresident Obama is taking fire from both sides of the aisle over his 2013 budget proposal, which he sent to Congress on Monday. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, called the $3.8 trillion spending plan a "nervous breakdown on paper" because it slashes spending too drastically. Republicans, on the other hand, called Obama's proposal a "gimmick," saying it aims to please voters by merely pretending to substantially cut the deficit while putting off tough decisions on deficit reduction until after the November election. Here, five other reasons Obama's budget is making such a splash:

President Obama’s fourth budget promises a fourth straight year of trillion-dollar deficits, a fourth straight year of masking new spending with lame gimmickry, and a fourth straight year of asking Congress to yoke the American people with a historically massive tax hike. It is a budget with all the courage and resolve of an intentional walk, and just in time for spring training.

It is a budget that spends a staggering $47 trillion over ten years and capitulates to the inevitability of a national debt larger than the national economy, assuring that by 2022 our interest payments alone will reach $1 trillion a year. It is a budget that hikes income, estate, and other taxes by $1.9 trillion over ten years, and uses that revenue not to reduce the deficit or shore up our existing entitlement commitments but on a raft of new stimuli that are as substantively dubious as they are politically opportunistic.

Keep reading this post . . .

It’s April 2012. You are a conscientious congressional staffer who still takes seriously the need to be a steward of taxpayers’ money. (Yes, we know for a fact there are more than a few of these folks around on Capitol Hill.) You are watching closely events surrounding an “omnibus” or “minibus” spending bill deemed even by conservative Republican members as “must pass” because it funds the military as well as other parts of government.

Suddenly, you hear about an outrageous earmark about to be slipped into the bill that would enrich a Fortune 500 company. You decide to alert a network of fiscal watchdogs you’ve met with over the years to wage an instant campaign against this piece of corporate welfare.

Keep reading this post . . .

The Week - The president knows the tax hikes in his spending plan have no chance of passing the GOP House. But that could still give him a great campaign argumentHere's a Barack Obama sound bite, from February 23, 2009, that you're likely to hear oh, about a zillion times this fall — but not from the Obama team:

President Obama unveiled his fiscal 2013 budget at Northern Virginia Community College Monday. His proposal includes $8 billion for community colleges to partner with businesses to provide training in job skills that are in demand. Students there were pleased to hear the president call for more support for their type of school.

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

President Obama laid out his proposed federal budget for 2013 at a community college in Virginia on Monday. The $ 3.8 trillion plan calls for new government spending, including stimulus-style spending on roads. It also seeks to achieve $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade

» E-Mail This     » Add to Del.icio.us

President Barack Obama loves to talk about how he was open to painful changes in entitlement programs in last year’s private budget talks with Republicans. Oddly enough, his bragged-about courage behind closed doors disappears every time he has to put his vision to paper in the light of day.

His latest budget is built on gimmicks and cheery assumptions that support a massive superstructure of new taxes and new debt. It is a blueprint for national decline, a budget worthy of the Élysée Palace in its fiscal indiscipline, its squeeze on defense, and its assumption of ever-increasing centralized bureaucratic power.

Keep reading this post . . .