Today, Vice President Joe Biden announced specific benchmarks that the federal government will use to determine whether the Recovery Act has been a success. But none of his benchmarks include numbers of jobs created.
October will see the roll out of recipient data from beneficiaries of the Recovery Act, allowing the public to better understand how and whether Recovery monies have been reaching our communities. But we already know that in many cases the answer is no, it has not.
Florida was one of the hardest hit by the recession, and has finished dead last in the race to spend recovery money.
Gihan Perera of the Miami Workers Center explains at Huffington Post:
There is slow spending at the state level despite the fact that Florida’s unemployment rate, foreclosure rate, and general economic disarray is higher than most other places in the country. After all, we (including California and Texas) were the epicenter of the mortgage crisis. Our state is the poster child for why the stimulus was necessary.…
BUT, Since I haven’t joined the ranks of the tea baggers yet (the right wing crazies have been outside stimulus meetings calling for the heads of these same officials, including our Republican governor), I hold a hope that the massive investment of stimulus dollars still has the potential to dramatically restructure the Florida economy, not just patch the holes in it. So, with a deep breath, I offer to these officials and our great republic the following fundamentals:
