Morning Cup of Stimulus: Whips and Grants

March 12, 2009, 9:24 a.m. EDT

South Carolina's Republican governor, Mark Sanford, just said no yesterday to stimulus funding, saying it signaled a Zimbabwe-esque economic decline. Rep. Jim Clyburn, D-S.C., the majority whip, urged state legislators to circumvent Sanford.

Even as Democratic lawmakers in Washington backed away from the idea of a second stimulus, Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the Republican whip, said his door was open -- assuming the next bill includes lots of tax cuts.

Grants.gov, the main marketplace for federal grants, may not be up to the task of managing the stimulus's added workflow. Peter Orszag, the Office of Management and Budget director, expects a 60-percent increase in traffic at the site, and ordered an immediate review of all money-giving computer systems.

Project of the day: A weekend electrical outage prompted University of Illinois' Urbana campus to ask for a new stimulus-powered power plant.

Follow ProPublica

Latest Stories from ProPublica

UnitedHealth Is Strategically Limiting Access to Critical Treatment for Kids With Autism

A Coast Guard Commander Miscarried. She Nearly Died After Being Denied Care.

Family Separations Persist. In Some Cases, the Government Doesn’t Say Why.

The FDA Hasn’t Inspected This Drug Factory After 7 Recalls for the Same Flaw, 1 Potentially Deadly

Republish This Story for Free

Creative Commons License (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

Thank you for your interest in republishing this story. You are are free to republish it so long as you do the following:

You have to credit ProPublica and any co-reporting partners. In the byline, we prefer “Author Name, Publication(s).” At the top of the text of your story, include a line that reads: “This story was originally published by ProPublica.” You must link the word “ProPublica” to the original URL of the story.
If you’re republishing online, you must link to the URL of this story on propublica.org, include all of the links from our story, including our newsletter sign up language and link, and use our PixelPing tag.
If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.
You can’t edit our material, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style. (For example, “yesterday” can be changed to “last week,” and “Portland, Ore.” to “Portland” or “here.”)
You cannot republish our photographs or illustrations without specific permission. Please contact [email protected].
It’s okay to put our stories on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories. You can’t state or imply that donations to your organization support ProPublica’s work.
You can’t sell our material separately or syndicate it. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc.
You can’t republish our material wholesale, or automatically; you need to select stories to be republished individually. (To inquire about syndication or licensing opportunities, contact [email protected].)
You can’t use our work to populate a website designed to improve rankings on search engines or solely to gain revenue from network-based advertisements.
We do not generally permit translation of our stories into another language.
Any website our stories appear on must include a prominent and effective way to contact you.
If you share republished stories on social media, we’d appreciate being tagged in your posts. We have official accounts for ProPublica on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Copy and paste the following into your page to republish:

Current site Current page