Three Thousand Million Or Fifteen Thousand Million For Obama To Control Congress And America

1% of 300,000,000,000 equals 3,000,000,000
2% of 300,000,000,000 equals 6,000,000,000
3% of 300,000,000,000 equals 9,000,000,000
4% of 300,000,000,000 equals 12,000,000,000
5% of 300,000,000,000 equals 15,000,000,000

Obama Stimulus Slush Fund

Slush Fund: A fund for buying votes or bribing public officials.

"The other three ARRA state programs cited above
are allocated according to formulas specified in the
legislation, though each program also includes a small
portion to be allocated at the discretion of the executive
branch."

A small portion is allocated to obama to be spent at his discretion. No formula. He can do what he wants to with it. How much is it? We don't know.

Is a small portion $3,000,000,000 or 1%. Is a small portion $15,000,000,000 or 5%?

Lets say it only $3,000,000,000 or just a "small portion" 1%.

Three Thousand Million.

Three Thousand Million that obama can use anyway he wants. It says at his discretion.

535 people in congress.

$5,607,476.63 each

Five Million six hundred and seven thousand each.

This is just a "small portion" of 1% obama could have spent at his own discretion to BUY the votes of any congressman or senator.

This is what congress voted for. Congress has voted for a kickback.

How much money has obama used in the stimulus slush fund that is at his discrection to buy the votes of congress.

How much money has obama used to buy or pay off people to keep quiet about his birth certificate?

How much money has obama used to pay off the "state run media".

How much money has obama used to buy off federal judges and lawyers?

How much money has obama used to coverup his true agenda?

HOW MUCH?

1% or 3 Billion
2% o3 6 Billion
3% or 9 Billion
4% or 12 Billion
4% or 15 Billion

I would like to know how this money was used.

If you are a liberal democrate you will of course want some of this money yourself.

If you are anyone other than a liberal democrate or communist i'm sure you won't get any of this money.

Three Thousand Million or Fifteen Thousand million for obama to control congress and America.

Now you know.

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The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009 (ARRA) was signed into law on February 17,
and already its impact is being felt in state capitals
around the nation.Governors and state legislators are
incorporating expected stimulus funds into 2009–2010
budgets and a number of state public works projects
predicated on ARRA funding already have begun.
As states start spending these ARRA funds, the debate
about their likely economic impact has taken
on new life.

One question is whether federal stimulus funds are
heading to those states best positioned to put the
money to good use right away.That is, have the funds
been allocated in a way that maximizes their potential
impact on national economic growth? This
Economic Letter addresses this question by comparing
the degree of economic need in different states with
each state’s expected share of ARRA funds.

Such an analysis is important in evaluating the likelihood
that stimulus money will be spent effectively.While
it is too early to tell whether the overall stimulus
package will have its intended effects, this review
suggests that, by and large, the distribution of federal
stimulus funds is indeed tilted toward those states most
likely to spend the funds quickly and effectively.
The economics of state allocations
Of the $787 billion in ARRA, state governments will
receive as much as $300 billion.

The bulk of these state funds will be spread over four key programs:

• A $54 billion Fiscal Stabilization Fund meant primarily
to stave off cuts in state education spending
• A $90 billion Fiscal Relief Fund meant to shore up
financing for state Medicaid programs
• A $40 billion program to allow states to extend and
increase unemployment insurance (UI) benefits
• At least $70 billion to fund transportation projects
The money going to states is meant to reduce their
need to raise taxes or cut government spending to
meet their constitutional balanced-budget requirements.
According to ARRA proponents, such fiscal
austerity could intensify the contraction of the national
economy (see, e.g., Romer 2009).

The total impact of ARRA money going to states
will depend on how quickly and productively states
use the funds. How a given state spends its ARRA
allocation will depend importantly on two factors:
the restrictions tied to the use of the funds and the
state’s budget position. For unrestricted funds, states
facing more severe budget deficits will probably spend
the money quickly. States in stronger fiscal health,
however, potentially could receive more unrestricted
money than they need to fund planned obligations
and might save the excess by adding to their rainy
day funds or transferring it to residents in the form
of tax cuts.A good indicator then of how likely a
state is to spend unrestricted federal funds immediately
is its projected near-term budget deficit.

I look at the relationship between state ARRA allocations
and projected state budget gaps below.
For restricted funds, such as money earmarked for
specific transportation projects, a different question
is in order:Will these new public investments crowd
out potential private investment, as some have argued
(e.g., Becker and Murphy 2009), by drawing away
productive resources such as capital and labor? The
closer a state’s economy is to operating at capacity,
the greater the potential for such crowding out.Below
I also analyze whether ARRA’s transportation spending
is expected to go disproportionately to states with
the greatest idle productive capacity, which would
reduce the potential for crowding out.

How are stimulus funds allocated to states?
The way in which ARRA funds will be distributed
to states differs for each component of the stimulus
package. For the $40 billion UI component, the federal
government will almost fully reimburse each
state’s cost of expanding and extending unemployment
benefits. Hence, these funds will be allocated
roughly in proportion to state unemployment rates.

The other three ARRA state programs cited above
are allocated according to formulas specified in the
legislation, though each program also includes a small
portion to be allocated at the discretion of the executive
branch.The Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which
is meant to prevent cuts in state education spending,
uses the simplest of the three formulas.

Aside froma small portion set aside for incentive grants, program
funds will be allocated to each state according to a weighted average of its total population and its schoolage population.

FRBSF ECONOMIC LETTER
Number 2009-14,April 17, 2009
Are Fiscal Stimulus Funds
Going to the “Right” States?
FRBSF Economic Letter 2 Number 2009-14,April 17, 2009
weighted average of its total population and its schoolage
population.
The Fiscal Relief Fund piggybacks on the existing
formula for federal government assistance to state
Medicaid programs and has three parts.The first is
a simple scaling up of the existing federal share of
a state’s Medicaid costs. Second, a so-called “holdharmless”
component is meant to offset cuts in federal
support called for by the existing formula in
states where per capita income grew rapidly in the
last few years prior to the start of the recession.The
third part provides for an additional increase in a
state’s federal Medicaid share in proportion to the
rise in the state’s unemployment rate during the recession.
Taken together, the Fiscal Relief Fund’s three
components direct the most support to states that
have experienced the most rapid reversals in economic
fortunes,where strong pre-recession economic growth
was followed by rapidly rising unemployment and
expanding Medicaid rolls.
The Fiscal Stabilization and Fiscal Relief Funds are
partially restricted.They are meant to enable states
to maintain spending on Medicaid and education
above minimum thresholds laid out in the legislation.
However, once a state has met those minimum requirements,
stimulus funds from these two programs
allow the state to shift resources to other parts of
its budget. For practical purposes, these funds are
largely unrestricted.
Are needy states getting more of the money?
Earlier I suggested that a reasonable indicator of how
likely a state is to spend unrestricted ARRA funds
immediately is its projected budget deficit. So one test
of the legislation’s potential impact is whether states
with bigger projected budget gaps are likely to receive
disproportionate shares of the Fiscal Stabilization and
Fiscal Relief Funds, the primary sources of unrestricted
state money in ARRA.To answer this, I look at the
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities data on projected
state fiscal 2010 budget gaps, as well as the
Center’s estimates of state Fiscal Stabilization and
Fiscal Relief Fund allocations.The budget gap data
are based on state reports forecasting the difference
between revenue and spending, assuming no change
in current state laws.
Figure 1 shows a scatter plot depicting the relationship
between these projected budget gaps and the
expected allocations of Fiscal Stabilization and Fiscal
Relief Funds. Each point in the plot represents a
state, identified by its postal code. Its placement along
the horizontal axis indicates its per capita budget gap.
Its placement along the vertical axis represents the
per capita funds it is expected to receive.The size of
the circle for each state is proportional to its population.
Finally, the line running through the data
points depicts the relationship between the two series
as estimated by population-weighted ordinary
least squares regression, a statistical technique for
measuring correlation.
The figure clearly shows a strong positive correlation
between a state’s degree of fiscal strain and the amount
of federal stimulus funds it is expected to receive.A
separate analysis indicates that this positive relationship
largely reflects the allocation of Fiscal Relief
Funds, rather than Fiscal Stabilization Funds.This is
Notes: Data points indicated by state postal codes. Size of circles is proportional to state population.A dozen states are missing due to
unavailability of budget gap data.
Data sources: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and U.S. Census Bureau.
AZ
AR
CA
CO
CT
DE
FL
GA
HI
ID
IA
KS
LA
ME
MD
MA
MI
MN
MS
NE NV
NJ
NY
OK OH NC
RI
SC
SD
TN
TX
UT
VT
VA
WA
WI
300
400
500
600
700
800
Fiscal stabilization and relief funds (per capita $)
0 200 400 600 800 1000 1200
FY10 state budget gap (per capita $)
Figure 1
Fiscal stabilization and relief funds vs. fiscal year 2010 budget gap
not surprising. Recall that the majority of the $54
billion Stabilization Fund is allocated to each state
based on a weighted average of its total population
and its school-age population.This means the per
capita allocation of the Fund will be in proportion
to the school-age share of a state’s total population.
Of course, there’s little reason to expect these youth
shares of the population to be correlated with projected
budget deficits, and in fact they are not.And
recall that the allocation of the $90 billion Fiscal
Relief Fund favors states that experienced rapid
economic growth leading up to the recession followed
by steep declines during the recession. Such
reversals of fortune also take a heavy toll on state
budgets, so it’s not surprising that the Fiscal Relief
funds are strongly correlated with these budget gaps.
I turn next to the issue of whether the impact of the
restricted funds ARRA distributes to states could be
hindered by crowding out of private-sector resources.
Specifically, I assess whether transportation funds,
the program’s largest source of restricted funds, will
be allocated disproportionately to those states most
likely to have idle capacity, especially unemployed
labor.The bulk of ARRA’s transportation funds is
expected to be allocated using the same formulas
that the Department of Transportation (DOT) uses
to distribute non-ARRA highway and other transportation
funds to states.These formulas are based
on factors such as a state’s total highway miles, and
needed repairs to roads and bridges previously identified
by DOT.They are not designed to account for
a state’s economic condition, and there is no reason
to expect a positive relationship between expected
per capita ARRA transportation funds and unemployment
rates. Data from the National Conference
of State Legislatures and the Bureau of Labor Statistics
confirm the absence of a positive correlation. In fact,
a slight negative correlation exists, since less densely
populated states tend to have more highway miles
per capita. In addition, low-population-density states
tend to be in better fiscal shape during this downturn,
thanks largely to booms in their natural resources
industries in recent years.
From the standpoint of maximizing the national
economic impact of the stimulus package, this distribution
of transportation spending clearly appears
less than optimal. However, all states have seen substantial
increases in their unemployment rates since
the start of the recession, so it’s hard to argue that
any state currently is at full employment and does
not have idle capacity that can be put to use on
major construction projects.
Conclusion
As far as maximizing its impact on national economic
growth,ARRA’s allocation across states clearly is not
perfect.The transportation funds are skewed toward
states with lower unemployment rates, albeit rates
above full employment levels.The Fiscal Stabilization
Fund is distributed to states based on the age composition
of each state’s population, which turns out,
not surprisingly, to be unrelated to state fiscal health.
The Fiscal Relief Fund, however, appears to be
well-targeted because it is geared toward those states
with the most serious fiscal strains.And the sheer
magnitude of the $90 billion fiscal relief program is
enough to ensure that ARRA fiscal aid funds will
in aggregate be allocated to those states most likely
to spend the money quickly.What’s more, aid provided
to states to fund additional unemployment
insurance benefits is directly aimed at getting money
into the hands of unemployed people, who are generally
considered to have high propensities to spend
rather than save.
So, while ARRA’s state allocations do not represent
the absolute optimal stimulus, they are on the whole
well directed.Overall, that means that the economic
impact of this support for state governments is more
likely to exceed than to fall short of forecasts.
DanielWilson
Senior Economist
References
Becker, Gary S., and Kevin M.Murphy. 2009.
“There’s No Stimulus Free Lunch.”Wall Street
Journal Op-Ed, Feb. 10.
Romer, Christina. 2009.“The Case for Fiscal Stimulus:
The Likely Effects of the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act.” Speech delivered at Brookings
Institution, Feb. 27. http://www.whitehouse.gov/
administration/eop/cea/speeches_testimony/02272009
FRBSF Economic Letter 3 Number 2009-14,April 17, 2009
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