Much of the stimulus money will be wasted.  When I taught Intro to Public Administration, I would start with a case study entitled “Dumping $1 million on Bakersfield.”  It illustrated the fact that public agencies have problems spending money fast.  Now the case study should be entitled “Dumping 800 billion on the USA.”

Note Eileen Norcross of GMU’s Mercatus Center is quoted below. Read the entire article here.

Stimulus haste could waste billions, experts say

Caution urged to prevent contract cost overruns

By Robert O?Harrow Jr., Washington Post 

Washington – The Obama administration’s economic stimulus
plan could end up wasting billions of dollars by attempting to spend
money faster than an overburdened government acquisition system can
manage and oversee it, according to documents and interviews with
contracting specialists.

The
$820 billion stimulus legislation includes provisions aimed at ensuring
oversight of the massive infusion of contracts, state grants and other
measures. At the urging of the administration, those provisions call
for transparency, bid competition, new auditing resources and new
oversight boards.

But
under the terms of the proposals, a depleted contracting work force
would be asked to spend more money more rapidly than ever before, while
also improving competition and oversight. Auditors would be asked to
track surges in spending on projects ranging from bridges and schools
to research of “green” energy and the development of electronic health
records – a challenge made more difficult because many contracts would
be awarded by state agencies.

The
stimulus plan presents a stark choice: The government can spend
unprecedented amounts of money quickly in an effort to jump-start the
economy or it can move more deliberately to thwart the cost overruns
common to federal contracts in recent years.

“You
can’t have both,” said Eileen Norcross, a senior research fellow at
George Mason University’s Mercatus Center who studied crisis spending
in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“There is no way to get around having to make a choice.”