Enacted in February last year, the Obama stimulus plan is aimed at creating jobs besides also promoting consumer spending and investment during the recession. According to reports released from the Whitehouse, the stimulus plan which is worth $ 787 billion has created and preserved 2 million jobs and has also prevented another great depression. United States Vice President Joe Biden is the one responsible for overseeing the expenditure of stimulus money. Though well intended, this plan has received a lot of criticism owing to the fact that it has not been able to cut a 9.7 percent jobless rate as earlier envisaged. Republicans from the opposition have continually battered the Obama stimulus plan terming it as poorly conceived and badly executed. Surveys conducted have castigated the stimulus plan in bad light, some of them even claiming that it has only succeeded in cutting unemployment rate by only a paltry four percent. But according to one of the President's advisors, ninety five percent of families have received a tax break emanating from the same plan. The proponents of this arrangement have defended its slow response to the unemployment levels citing various factors as being the cause. They have said that people are expecting too much too fast.According to reports obtained from the Whitehouse, $334 billion was to be spent by the end of January this year, out of which $179 billion has already been put to use while an estimated $119 billion has been used as tax relief. The Obama stimulus plan however proposes $1 trillion for healthcare, a plan aimed at helping the poor access proper healthcare. The difference between this plan and the Bush one is that the former has a well laid out strategy through which it is going to be paid for. The Obama stimulus plan is aiming at providing a one time $250 worth of Government checks to all recipients of social security, rail road retirees and veterans. The program further goes ahead and provides $800 worth of tax credit for working families while also providing $400 for each working individual. In President barrack Obama's own backyard of Illinois, the department of transportation is the one, which received the bulk of the money, with more than $845 million being allocated. The plan aims at creating as much domestic job opportunities as possible through investing in traditional infrastructural projects. These projects include things such as repairing and paving old roads, something that can be very well exemplified as having been achieved by the State of Illinois, which has so far repaved more than 31 miles of all the arterial streets. Of the total amount of money proposed, almost $263 billion has already been spent. The $150 million which was supposed to be injected into public works projects is yet to be touched. The Obama administration has been quick to point out that the positive effects of the stimulus plan on employment is set to be seen later this year, something that has been attributed to the time consuming project planning and award of contracts.
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Enacted in February last year, the Obama stimulus plan is aimed at creating jobs besides also promoting consumer spending and investment during the recession.
This article was written by Marinko from Croatia. Click here for more information about the Obama stimulus plan
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