One-Third of Stimulus Money Spent

The Obama administration has passed the one-third mark in getting last February’s stimulus dollars out the door, according to the latest numbers from Recovery.gov. That figure includes $176 billion in spending, and an estimated $93 billion in tax relief.

You can find these numbers and more on our interactive Stimulus Progress Bar.

The milestone comes on the heels of a new report from the Congressional Budget Office, which estimates that the total cost of the stimulus will be $75 billion more than the CBO had originally projected.

When Congress passed the stimulus bill last year, the CBO estimated it would cost $787 billion in extra spending and lost revenue from tax cuts. That estimate has now been increased to $862 billion, due to an increase in the projected costs of some of the programs in the stimulus, including food stamps and unemployment insurance.

For more details, check out our Stimulus Progress Bar.

UPDATE, Feb. 4th 2010: Despite the CBO’s new estimate of the total cost of the stimulus, ProPublica will continue to count stimulus spending against the amount of money that Congress actually authorized the administration to spend ($792 billion) rather than the amount of money the administration is expected to spend—which, as we’ve seen, will change as time goes on. We’ll revise our $792 billion number if (or when) Congress does.