Follow the money
One of the requirements Congress put on last year’s economic stimulus bill was that the spending have new levels of transparency and accountability.

Among the efforts to achieve that was the creation of one Web site to track the spending, www.recovery.gov.

For its analysis, The Journal Gazette used recipient-reported data, then used a computer analysis to sort the awards in different ways.

You can use Recovery.gov in the same way, either through maps, reports or downloads of the same data, or awards reported by the agencies that made them.
Dan Stockman, The Journal Gazette

On Feb. 13, 2009, Congress passed the stimulus bill, meant to rush cash to projects that would quickly save jobs and create new ones while investing in the nation’s infrastructure.

But a year later, more than half of the $5.4 billion awarded to Indiana under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is still on the books of state agencies, according to a Journal Gazette analysis of federal stimulus reports.

Data reported by companies, organizations and local governments that have received stimulus money through Dec. 31 show awards that total only $2,336,145,641, while state agencies reported $3,053,936,445.

“That doesn’t stimulate,” said Purdue professor Larry DeBoer Jr., an expert in government policies. “You’ve got to spend in order to stimulate.”