American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act)

Standard Coding Next Big Step in Contracting Oversight

Aug 11, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee last week about efforts to deploy a sophisticated fraud-prevention tool developed through the Recovery Act across all federal agencies, a government official told senators that the "biggest impediment" to successful utilization of the technology is "the lack of a...governmentwide award number system." Adoption of such a system, which would provide a universal code to government contract awards, could transform federal contracting oversight.

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GAO Calls for More Descriptive Recovery Recipient Reports

Jul 15, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

On this blog, we talk a lot about how great the Recovery Act recipient reports are (these are the reports recipients turn in every quarter explaining what they've done with their Recovery Act funds). Over the past year, we've thrown around words like "groundbreaking" and "historic" to describe how we feel about them. But they aren't perfect. Among other problems, reading the reports can oftentimes leave readers confused about what the project in question actual does, as the main descriptive fields can be anywhere from a few words to lines and lines of text filled with industry jargon.

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Commentary: The Case for a Second Stimulus

If there's one thing Republicans and Democrats can agree on, it's that the economy has seen better days. Indeed, looking at various employment statistics, it's hard for anyone to express optimism about the nation's economic condition. The national unemployment rate is 9.5 percent, and the number of workers unemployed for 27 or more weeks is at an historic high. The nation's present economic state has provided ammunition to critics who argue that the Recovery Act, the $787 billion package designed to stimulate the economy, has failed. The current economic situation has prompted calls from others for a second stimulus.

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Administration Unveils New Fraud-Fighting Measures

Jun 18, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

This is presumably not what the 'do not pay' list will look like

Writing in his Federal Eye blog over at the Washington Post, Ed O'Keefe put up an interesting piece this morning about the Obama administration creating a government "do not pay" list to help prevent certain improper payments, and ordering the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to begin using a Recovery Act fraud-fighting tool.

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Economic Costs of Inaction Should Make State Aid a No-Brainer for Congress

Jun 15, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

Does this adequately convey the allusion to a 'no-brainer'?

In a post this morning on his Beat the Press blog, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) economist Dean Baker makes an interesting point when he laments the one-sided economic reporting on President Obama's recent request for quick action on several economic stimulus measures languishing in Congress. While the president's demand would add nearly $80 billion to budget deficits over the next decade, inaction on these aid measures will likely reduce gross domestic product (GDP) by $120 billion and eliminate 800,000 jobs.

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Recovery.gov Moves to Cloud Computing

May 14, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

In his latest Chairman's Corner, Recovery Board Chairman Earl Devaney announced that Recovery.gov is now the first "government-wide" cloud computing system. Sounds impressive, right? Well, sort of. Essentially, this means that Recovery.gov, which used to be housed on servers operated by the Board and used solely for that purpose, is now hosted on "cloud" servers run by Amazon.com.

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New Recovery Act Memo Comes as Recipients Improve Reporting

May 5, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

On Tuesday, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a new guidance on Recovery Act recipient reporting. The memo expands on several earlier memos on the same topic, but it lays out more concrete steps for agencies to follow.

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OMB Watch Releases Fourth Quarter Recovery Act Data

Apr 15, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Over on Fedspending.org, our government spending database, we just updated our Recovery Act tab to include the fourth quarter 2009 recipient reports. Users can now search through reports from February through December 2009, and can sort, sift and download it to their hearts' content. And be sure to check out some of our pre-cooked searches, including congressional districts ranked by Recovery Act spending and a list of the top 100 prime recipients.

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CEA: No, Seriously, the Recovery Act is Working

Apr 15, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

I feel sorry for the economists over at the White House's Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). Every quarter, they run the numbers and find that the Recovery Act is significantly helping the economy. Last quarter, the CEA found that the Act increased GDP between 1½ and 3 percentage points and created between 1½ to 2 million jobs. This time around they found that it created between 2.2 and 2.8 million jobs and raised first quarter GDP between 2.5 and 2.9 percent. In other words, the Recovery Act is pretty consistently helping the economy improve, and in fact its effects may be growing. But no one listens to them! It must be a frustrating job.

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Fatally Flawed Stimulus Report Ignores Subrecipients

Apr 2, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

The great thing about the Recovery Act is that it provides us with a great deal of data on hundreds of billions of dollars of federal spending. Anyone can go to Recovery.gov, the stimulus tracking website, download data for their state or the entire nation, and see each and every report submitted by recipients of the funds -- all 230,000 of them. Sifting through that amount of data can be like drinking from a fire hose, but it's an important feature of any spending transparency system. Anyone can take the data and do their own analysis, greatly expanding the uses of the data.

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