• $2 billion earmark to re-start FutureGen, a near-zero emissions coal power plant in Illinois that the Department of Energy defunded last year because it said the project was inefficient.

• A $246 million tax break for Hollywood movie producers to buy motion picture film.

• $650 million for the digital television converter box coupon program.

• $88 million for the Coast Guard to design a new polar icebreaker (arctic ship).

• $448 million for constructing the Department of Homeland Security headquarters.

• $248 million for furniture at the new Homeland Security headquarters.

• $600 million to buy hybrid vehicles for federal employees.

• $400 million for the Centers for Disease Control to screen and prevent STD's.

• $1.4 billion for rural waste disposal programs.

• $150 million for Smithsonian museum facilities.

• $1 billion for the 2010 Census, which has a projected cost overrun of $3 billion.

• $75 million for "smoking cessation activities."

• $200 million for public computer centers at community colleges.

• $75 million for salaries of employees at the FBI.

• $25 million for tribal alcohol and substance abuse reduction.

• $500 million for flood reduction projects on the Mississippi River.

• $10 million to inspect canals in urban areas.

• $6 billion to turn federal buildings into "green" buildings.

• $500 million for state and local fire stations.

• $650 million for wildland fire management on forest service lands.

• $1.2 billion for "youth activities," including youth summer job programs.

• $88 million for renovating the headquarters of the Public Health Service.

• $412 million for CDC buildings and property.

• $500 million for building and repairing National Institutes of Health facilities in Bethesda, Maryland.

• $160 million for "paid volunteers" at the Corporation for National and Community Service.

• $5.5 million for "energy efficiency initiatives" at the Department of Veterans Affairs National Cemetery Administration.

• $850 million for Amtrak.

• $100 million for reducing the hazard of lead-based paint.

• $75 million to construct a "security training" facility for State Department Security officers when they can be trained at existing facilities of other agencies.

• $110 million to the Farm Service Agency to upgrade computer systems.

• $200 million in funding for the lease of alternative energy vehicles for use on military installations.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/02/gop.stimulus.worries/index.html

-    $13,186,939,000,000.00 national debt
-$109,529,926,000,000.00 in future unfunded liabilities.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-$122,716,865,000,000.00

"From 2008 to now, the composition of the stimulus bills has changed, from mostly tax rebates intended to boost consumer demand to mostly income transfers from the employed to the unemployed and from the federal government to the states. Though the stimulus machine’s architects would be loath to admit it, this transformation represents the failure of its stated purpose, which is to create jobs and to jump-start sustainable economic growth. The unemployment rate is stalled out at around 10 percent, and no growth model that relies on continued infusions of borrowed money is sustainable. The stimulus machine is designed to provide the illusion of growth in the absence of a solution to the jobs problem, and since no one in Washington seems to know how to solve that problem, it is going to be very difficult, as a matter of politics, to turn the machine off.

The mechanics of the machine are simple. Politicians feel an irresistible compulsion to “do something” about persistently high unemployment, yet they lack the will or the ability to do things that might actually work: so they give away money. Republicans are not exempt from the laws that govern this system: The Economic Stimulus Act of 2008 passed with the support of 169 House and 32 Senate Republicans and was signed by a Republican president. Granted, this was the least objectionable of the five stimulus bills. It consisted mostly of individual tax rebates and temporary enhancements to business-tax deductions, and was intended to provide a “booster shot” to the economy by encouraging spending and hiring.

But consumers and businesses tend to make spending and hiring decisions based on long-term income expectations, not short-term windfalls, as the late economist Milton Friedman explained. And as Friedman would have predicted, the 2008 stimulus had little effect on economic growth, and it certainly failed to prevent the economy from spiraling into a recession as large problems in the banking sector came to light. The best that can be said for the 2008 measure is that policymakers minimized the inefficient allocation of resources by giving the money to the private sector instead of spending it themselves. For the most part, that was not the case with the stimulus bills that followed."

cont... http://article.nationalreview.com/437879/mechanical-failure/stephen-spruiell

It was a campaign promise, it was long overdue, it was the right thing to do.

When "W" left office on January 20, 2009, the national debt was $10,626,877,048,913.08