I demonstrated a while back from the CBO report that less than 7% of the 2009-2010 spending was infrastructure in the stimulus bill. In fact, this percentage barely increases past 2010. Below is a piece of a Washington Post graphic (whole chart here). I have colored orange the areas that include infrastructure.
I have generously included all of the highway, transportation, interior, energy, water, Corps of Engineers, school renovation and parks spending, though my bet is that a bunch of that never turns into steel and concrete. I have also included some of the rural and urban development money. I have excluded facilities that are by bureaucrats for bureaucrats, such as improvements in federal office buildings. I have tried to keep things proportional, but note, as always, actual spending does not match the rhetoric. For example, you might think that the school spending, from Obama’s speeches, was all infrastructure, but in fact only $20 out of over $90 billion is for school renovation. The rest is for … something or other.
Click the link for the graph.
Seven percent.
