$787b Stimulus Bill Passed (Table: Spending Breakdown)

After it passed the House and Senate amidst lots of clever Republican propaganda, the stimulus bill is now officially rebranded. President Obama signed the $787b American Economic Recovery & Reinvestment Act into law today and launched Recovery.gov so people can track timelines and spending. Republicans called it spending and owned the debate by calling out tiny slivers of “the spending bill” as wasteful, and repeatedly claimed you can’t just pass billions that fast—have they forgotten how quickly their majority passed billions in Iraq invasion funds?

Whether we should have invaded Iraq is subject to debate. Whether we should help an economy in its worst crisis since the 1930s is not. The only debate is how politicians talk about it. Now that we’re moving forward, Recovery.gov and the very name of the package—American Recovery & Reinvestment Act—will be the way for the administration to out-propagandize the non-ruling party just like they did in the election. So far it looks like a solid communications template, and now we all get to watch as the timeline and the numbers get filled in. Below is a breakdown of the proposed programs.