CNSNews.com - Despite Obama’s Repeated Claims That Enacting $787-Billion Stimulus Was Urgent, 78 Percent of Money Remained Unspent by End of Fiscal 2009 Says Federal Auditing Agency

CNSNews.com - Despite Obama’s Repeated Claims That Enacting $787-Billion Stimulus Was Urgent, 78 Percent of Money Remained Unspent by End of Fiscal 2009 Says Federal Auditing Agency: "CNSNews.com - After his election last November and until the $787-billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was passed in February, President Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that it was urgent for Congress to enact his economic “recovery” bill immediately. Yet, by the end of fiscal 2009 fully 78 percent of the federal spending authorized by that bill had not yet taken place, according to the Government Accountability Office.

In the meantime, the national unemployment rate climbed 26 percent, from 8.1 percent in February to 10.2 percent in October.

“As of September 30, 2009, approximately $173 billion of the $787 billion—or about 22 percent—of the total funds provided by the Recovery Act had been paid out by the federal government,” the GAO revealed in a report released November 19. Seventy-eight percent of the money remained unspent.

Over and over again in the weeks before Congress passed the bill, President-elect and then President Obama repeatedly and emphatically insisted that the fate of the U.S. economy rested on getting the bill enacted immediately so that federal funds could be spent to create jobs for Americans.

In their rush to pass the legislation, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D.-Nev.) both called floor votes on the proposal less than 24 hours after the final text of the bill—which was more than 1,000 pages long—had been completed and posted on the Web site of the House Appropriations Committee."