Barack's Billions

By Patrick Appel

Via John Cole, a CBO study on the stimulus bill:

A Congressional Budget Office analysis of President Barack Obama’s plan found that most of the approximately $355 billion in proposed discretionary spending on highways, renewable energy and other initiatives wouldn’t be spent before 2011. The government would spend about $26 billion of the money this year and $110 billion more next year, the report said.

About $103 billion would be spent in 2011, while $53 billion would be spent in 2012 and $63 billion between 2013 and 2019, the report said. Republicans said the analysis showed that the plan, unveiled last week by House Democrats, won’t get money into the economy quickly enough.

Yglesias makes a recommendation:

...insofar as lawmakers are interested in sneaking some 2011 and 2012 transportation infrastructure spending into this bill they may as well forget about shovel readiness and identify useful transit and intercity rail projects.