The stimulus bottleneck

It is becoming increasingly striking how unstimulating the whopping $787 billion in federal stimulus funding has been so far.

One need look no further than the pace at which American Recovery and Reinvestment Act money has been put to work by the U.S. Forest Service. The agency's Northern Region received $122 million since the act was passed by Congress in February, but only about 30 percent of the money has been "obligated" and even less has been spent.

The Flathead National Forest received nearly $15 million in stimulus funds but so far contracts worth only $1 million have been awarded for a few projects. True enough, the bulk of stimulus funding will eventually "hit the ground," most of it next year.

But that's a long time when one recalls the breathless urgency with which the stimulus package was rushed through Congress in order to provide an immediate jump start to the economy. The best part of the package - tax cuts - probably had some immediate impact but the lion's share of spending has yet to happen, except in government.

USA Today recently reported that stimulus money has boosted the federal work force by more than 25,000 employees this year. Meanwhile, the private sector struggles, with national unemployment reaching 9.8 percent and an additional 263,000 jobs lost in September, according to a Labor Department report released Friday.

In fairness, the Forest Service is not alone when it comes to the painfully slow process of federal agencies trying to drag stimulus funding into the economy. And on the Flathead Forest, stimulus money is not being used to buy more government jobs. Rather, it will be rightfully directed to private contractors for a wide range of worthy infrastructure and forest health projects. But again, most of it won't get under way until next year.

While Congress did not offer much in the way of careful vetting and oversight of stimulus spending, part of the reason the money is moving so slowly through bureaucracies is that projects must comply with federal acquisition regulations.

"There is a very high level of oversight and I think that is a good thing," Tom Tidwell, the former Northern regional forester and now chief of the Forest Service, told the Inter Lake editorial board only a few short months ago.

That may be, but the oversight would be more useful if it actually resulted in stimulus to the economy happening as fast as advertised in Congress last winter.