Opponents of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act appropriations inside and outside of government are renewing their attacks on the spending program, this time by arguing that the economy is improving, and that the approximately $675 billion which is still unspent out of the total $787 billion in appropriations should be repealed and used instead to pay down the expected federal deficit of $2 trillion. Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina, along with House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio and Stanford University economist John Cogan all argue that the economy is already beginning to recover, and that the recovery is not the result of the stimulus legislation. At the same time they assert that the appropriations have failed to stem job losses, and the money should be redirected to other purposes.
The 85% of stimulus appropriations still sitting in vaults at the Treasury Department are, of course, a tempting target for any legislator needing funding for his or her project which got left off the stimulus list. The lesson business people can take from the renewed attacks is that if you want your business to get any help at all from the stimulus measure, you need to get to work and see to it that your contract or grant is not only approved, but also funded, before these new repeal efforts can gain momentum.
The 85% of stimulus appropriations still sitting in vaults at the Treasury Department are, of course, a tempting target for any legislator needing funding for his or her project which got left off the stimulus list. The lesson business people can take from the renewed attacks is that if you want your business to get any help at all from the stimulus measure, you need to get to work and see to it that your contract or grant is not only approved, but also funded, before these new repeal efforts can gain momentum.
