At Current Pace, Stimulus Won’t be Fully Tapped For Another Two Years

We’ve just updated our Stimulus Progress Bar, which shows that total project and grant spending now stands at $98 billion, up about $4 billion from a week ago. That translates to about $570 million a day in new stimulus spending over the past week—a torrent of money in any other context, but a mere trickle compared with the $1.3 billion in daily stimulus spending during the first 100 days of the Recovery Act.

The rate of spending has previously caught President Obama’s attention. According to USA Today, Obama told his cabinet in June that he was “not satisfied” with the rate of spending. As USA Today noted, a “slowdown” was all but inevitable since the initial batch of stimulus money went to states in giant block grants for education and Medicaid. But how much of a concern is the current rate of spending?

Over the last four weeks, federal agencies have spent an average of $614 million a day on stimulus projects and grants, according to data from Recovery.gov and compiled by ProPublica. At that rate, it would take two years, one month, and 26 days to spend the rest of the $483 billion set aside for grants and projects. That means the stimulus would wrap up in November 2011.

Check out the details on our Stimulus Progress Bar.