If, like John Maynard Keynes, you believe that spending, any spending, will revive a flagging economy, the freshly minted, 1000-page American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, calling for $504 billion in deficit-financed spending is for you. Well, not quite. It seems that most of the money will not be spent very soon. About 30 percent won’t hit the economy until 2011, and the balance is likely to be tied up in the procurement processes of the federal and state governments at least until well into 2010. After all, the Department of Energy, given $40 billion to spend on green projects, has yet to disburse funds authorized by Congress in 2005 for just that purpose. And the Congressional Budget Office says it could take eight years for the undermanned Commerce Department to spend the $7 billion ticketed for the expansion of broadband access in rural areas.
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