Vermont's Stimulus Receipts from the Feds = $75 Million
Tom Evslin, Vermont's stimulus spending 'czar,' reports on his blog that Vermont's cash receipts from the Feds as of June 24, 2009 are ~$75 Million. His full post is here.
Many argue that spending our way out of a recession by plunging the country deeper into debt is not the right thing to do. There is merit in that argument, but Vermont does not set national policy and would be foolish not to accept the dollars that are so freely being printed and sent around to the states.
While we applaud transparency in reporting receipts and expenditures, any real benefits must be measured in the outcomes produced from the dollars spent. Only time and good reporting will tell if Vermont has gotten results commensurate with spending.
Tom reports that: "The bulk of the money state government has actually received has gone to human services - almost $71 million largely for help paying Medicaid benefits. Just under $5 million was received for transportation projects (these are posted monthly so this number is as of the end of May)." Paying medical bills does not seem to us to do much of anything associated with "Recovery and Reinvestment." At best that's treading water in a medical system whose costs are out of control.
"As of June 24, Vermont state government had posted actual cash receipts to its coffers of $74,846,608 from the federal government of funds authorized under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA aka the stimulus bill). This does not count stimulus money which does NOT pass through state government such as Pell grants to individuals attending college, grants made by the Small Business Administration to businesses, and tax cuts and credits to individuals and businesses (does not collecting money count as an expenditure?).
To put this in context, over the life of ARRA, generally two years, the state should receive about $720 million in grants which are allocated to us under various formulae in the stimulus bill (and which we get as long as we jump through the right hoops in the right order and account for it properly). We also hope to get $200 million or more in competitive grants under various stimulus programs. Nationwide ARRA is supposed to spend $787 billion."
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