American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act)

Recovery Act Data Shows Recipients Are Learning

Feb 25, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Earlier today, the Recovery Board released the list of Recovery Act recipients who did not file during the second reporting period. According to the Board, recipients of 1,036 Recovery Act awards failed to file during this quarter, which was from Oct. 1 through Dec. 31, 2009. That number represents a whopping 76 percent decline from the first reporting cycle, which saw 4,359 missing award reports, and is less than one percent of all the award reports. Equally good news is that of the 1,036 missing reports, only 389 were from "repeat offenders," or recipients who failed to file in both quarters.

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Commentary: Celebrating One of the Recovery Act's Legacies: Transparency

Feb. 17 marked the one-year anniversary of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly called the Recovery Act. Both political parties celebrated the occasion with partisan attacks. Democrats heralded the act as having saved the nation's economy, while Republicans savaged it for being an expensive government program with little to show by way of jobs. While the two parties can argue over how effective the act actually has been, both can agree on one thing: the lasting legacy of the Recovery Act’s transparency provisions.

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Recovery Act More Successful than You Think

Feb 17, 2010 by Gary Therkildsen*

With the arrival of the one-year anniversary of the Recovery Act, experts and pundits alike are reviewing how the Obama administration's stimulus effort has stacked up thus far. Despite what some in Congress say and in contrast to how the public generally feels, it turns out the Recovery Act has worked pretty well and has been quite a successful piece of public policy.

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The Recovery Act's Real Legacy: Transparency

Feb 17, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Yes, today is the Recovery Act's birthday, and to celebrate, everyone and their uncle are rushing to "evaluate" (translation: put their spin on) the Act. Did the Recovery Act create jobs? Did it avert the Great Depression II? Are we getting anything for the $862 billion? The answer to all these questions is "Yes" (see here, here, and here for some good evidence), but the debate ignores the more lasting legacy of the entire Act: its transparency provisions.

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What If?

Feb 17, 2010 by Craig Jennings

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA or Recovery Act). We're going to put up some more substantive posts later, but I thought these graphs in the New York Times really get to the heart of the "did it work" question.

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Board Releases New Features for Recovery.gov

Feb 2, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

While the entire rest of the fiscal policy world is obsessing about the budget, I thought I'd take a minute to talk about the other major event of the week, the release of the second round of Recovery Act recipient reporting. We're still working on sifting through the reports themselves, but the website, Recovery.gov, also received an overhaul this weekend. While many of the site's new features still have a long way to go, it's encouraging to see the Recovery Board, which is responsible for the site, actively working to improve the website, despite the fact that public attention has largely moved on.

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Second Round of Recovery Act Recipient Reports Released Saturday

Jan 29, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

As a reminder, tomorrow the Recovery Board will release the next batch of recipient reports on Recovery.gov. The new reports will be released along with a limited overhaul of the site, which will feature a new search option, a "diversity map," and a job search function. We'll be reviewing these new features, and the new reports, on Monday.

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CBO Recovery Act Cost Estimate Rises to $862 Billion

Jan 29, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

I'm sure you all already read all of the Congressional Budget Office's 2010 Budget Outlook since I blogged about it the other day, but in case you missed it, the outlook also included a special section on the Recovery Act. The main take away from this section is that the CBO predicts that the overall cost of the Act will be higher than initially estimated, thanks to a couple of factors.

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The Recovery Act Spending That Wasn't There

Recovery Act recipient reporting has received a great deal of attention in the media, and while some of this coverage has been critical (reporting on non-existent congressional districts or ZIP codes, unreliable job creation numbers, etc.), many news articles portray comprehensive oversight of the act because of transparency requirements in the law. However, approximately two-thirds of the spending in the Recovery Act bypasses these requirements, leading to a dearth of information about how the money is being spent. As time passes and Recovery Act spending continues, this lack of data is becoming more apparent, as highlighted by a recent Internal Revenue Service (IRS) report showing that millions of dollars in Recovery Act tax breaks are vulnerable to tax fraud.

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A New Year, a New Reporting Cycle Begins

Jan 4, 2010 by Sam Rosen-Amy

Just a friendly reminder that on January 1, the clock began on the second Recovery Act recipient reporting cycle. Prime and sub recipients have from January 1 to January 15 to submit their reports to FederalReporting.gov, recipients will edit these reports from then until January 22, and agencies will then have until January 29 to review the reports. Everything will be published on Recovery.gov on Saturday, January 30.

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