ARRA in Action

On February 17, 2009, President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act as a direct response to the economic crisis. The Recovery Act is designed to not only jumpstart the economy, but also create jobs and projects that will contribute to grown down the road, like infrastructure development and improvements. An interesting aspect to this act is that there is a website that shows where all of the funding has been sent in order to enhance accountability and provide transparency in government spending.



I found this to be very interesting and believe that it has the potential to do many good things for certain areas of our nation, including the job market as well as leading to more environmentally conscious developments from here on. Recently the EPA recognized the Ports Authority in Charleston, SC for using $2 million in ARRA funds to repower and retrofit its diesel and cargo handling equipment in order to reduce NOx and PM emissions as well as create approximately 37 new jobs. The Department of Education in South Carolina is also using approximately $700,000 in ARRA funds to replace four existing buses with hybrid buses, as well as retrofit 500 other buses in order to reduce diesel emissions by up to 4.7 tons and create 17 jobs. After living in South Carolina my entire life and knowing how bad the air and water can be, I think that the ability to have the money to do necessary projects like this will be forever beneficial, not to mention the numerous jobs that are very much needed.

The state of Colorado recieved over $500 million for tranportation upgrades statewide for new projects as well as upgrades to current roads. As of January 31, 2010, there have been over 16,000 jobs created in the state of Colorado for almost 100 different transportation projects on the local and state level. Because the money has to be allotted to its project 120 days after funding is granted, governments are forced to know what their projects are going to be ahead of time.

On the federal level, there has been $26.6 billion given nationwide and so far most of the money has proven to be very beneficial and has gone to good use. With the ability to see where all of the funding has gone, it forces local governments and organizations to live up to the promises made when asking for the funding. It forces them to complete the projects in a timely manor as well as think harder about exactly what the money needs to be used for. So far, there have been been a reported 608,203 jobs created by ARRA funding as of December 31, 2009.