2010-02-25 CNN
A year to the day after President Obama signed the massive stimulus bill into law, the administration is talking it up, but where's all that money actually gone? Josh Levs, can you actually breakdown every single cent for us?
JOSH LEVS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I wish. That would actually make me really happy if we can get that specific. We're getting pretty close. We're getting there. Here's the basic idea. You know, we're taking a look back because it was signed into law one year ago today. Happy birthday, stimulus. We were trying to check back on what this administration said about it in general, and here is one thing that President Obama said at the time.
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BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I hope this investment will ignite our imagination once more, spurring new discoveries and breakthroughs in science, in medicine, in energy to make our economy stronger and our nation more secure and our planet safer for our children.
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LEVS: Now, there's no doubt the stimulus money has gone to all sorts of different projects, but what so many people keep asking us is where is this money going, how much is it? Let's get straight to the numbers. A lot of people want to see this.
First of all, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the total cost of the stimulus over ten years, $862 billion, but what a lot of people may not realize is the majority of it actually does not go to funding projects out there. The majority of it is going to things like tax cuts, benefits like social security and food stamps. Here on your screen how much money has actually been spent from the total. A $119 billion have already gone to tax cuts, and $179 billion have already been paid out, and that includes - you can see down there, $31 billion on projects.
So, the things we talk about the most like road projects, and science projects, and these kinds of things, when we're looking at that, we're seeing $31 billion, Kyra, in total that's actually been spent on those kinds of projects, and that what we're breaking down for you here at the stimulus desk.
PHILLIPS: What about jobs?
LEVS: Jobs is the biggest thing a lot of people want to know about, right? What we hear from the administration a lot of the time is they say, they believe there are 2 million people working today who would not be working otherwise. I'm going to break this down for you really intensely over the next hour. I'm going to break it down in the 10:00 hour, but I'll tell you for now, there is no such thing as one very clear number of jobs because it depends how you define it, and that feeds all these different arguments out there, and that's why you got to be there with us when we really break this down for you coming up in the next hour -- Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right. I bet the viewers have a lot to say about this as well.
LEVS: They have a lot to say about this. In fact, let's do a couple of things here. Let's show everyone how you can weigh in, because we gave you this address yesterday. We got my screen right there, CNN.com/josh also CNN.com/Kyra. Facebook and Twitter, joshlevsCNN. So many people weighing in with a lot of questions, a lot of you are saying, hey, the stimulus is not helping me. I want to give you a little sense that we have coming up for you today, so I'm going to show you two things really quickly.
First of all, this is my team behind me. Over here, you're going to need to know this guy. He's Ben Tinker (ph) who's doing a lot of research for us, and the reason you need to know, he is not only doing research here, but he's also become a baker of sorts. Kyra, I want to show you a cake here. Come on over. We have Rob, the cameraman. This is our producer, Rachel. This right here is the stimulus birthday cake, Kyra. Check it out. He went to a bakery yesterday. He asked them to make a pie chart on a cake for the stimulus, and they had no clue what he was talking about.
So he actually baked in his own place last night, and he is showing us -- this is the total stimulus, and this chunk right here is the amount that will ever go to projects, $275 billion in total going to projects from the stimulus. Thank you, Mr. Cake man! PHILLIPS: (INAUDIBLE) Ben. I love that. Yes.
LEVS: We are going to eat it this afternoon.
PHILLIPS: Sounds good. All right. Save me a piece.
LEVS: You got it.
PHILLIPS: The least expensive piece.