Recovery Act Fourth Quarterly Report - The Public Investment Provisions of the Recovery Act

THE PUBLIC INVESTMENT PROVISIONS OF THE RECOVERY ACT

The ARRA included $319 billion in public investment spending and in tax incentives linked directly to specific types of investment.  We count as public investment any ARRA expenditure or tax program that directly results in activity that increases the capital stock of the Federal government, state and local governments, or private firms.  We also count provisions that affect the Nation’s human capital and knowledge capital, areas not measured in the national income accounts but which economists have identified as crucial to generating long-run economic growth (see e.g. CEA 2010b and sources cited therein).¹¹   While these programs are helping the economy to recover and put Americans back to work today, they are also making investments in areas such as clean energy, health information technology, roads, and the skills of our workers that will benefit the economy far into the future. 

This section describes the types of public investment spending in the Recovery Act and the long-run benefits to the economy.  It then discusses the short-run macroeconomic impact of the spending.  Investment outlays increased significantly in the second quarter of 2010, corresponding to what the Vice President has called the “Summer of Recovery.” ¹²   A final part looks in depth at one category of public investment spending -- transportation projects. 

One important feature of the public investment spending programs in the Recovery Act is that many of them are leveraging outside funds.  This has the potential to make government spending go even further in rescuing today’s economy and rebuilding tomorrow’s by partnering Recovery Act spending with investments from the private sector and other levels of government.  This use of leverage is the subject of Section V of the report.
 

A.  Categories of Public Investment Spending  

The Recovery Act funded a broad variety of programs.  We have classified the public investment spending into 10 functional categories:

1. 1. Clean Energy.  A central piece of the ARRA is more than $90 billion in government investment and tax incentives to lay the foundation for the clean energy economy of the future.  The CEA’s second quarterly report grouped these clean energy investments into eight sub-categories: $29 billion for Energy Efficiency, including $5 billion to pay for energy efficiency retrofits in low-income homes; $21 billion for Renewable Generation, such as the installation of wind turbines and solar panels; $10 billion for Grid Modernization to develop the so-called “smart grid” that will involve sophisticated electric meters, high-tech electricity distribution and transmission grid censors, and energy storage; $6 billion to support domestic manufacturing of advanced batteries and other components of Advanced Vehicles and Fuels Technologies; $18 billion for Traditional Transit and High-Speed Rail; $3 billion to fund crucial research, development, and demonstration of Carbon Capture and Sequestration technologies; $3 billion for Green Innovation and Job Training to invest in the science, technology, and workforce needed for a clean energy economy; and about $2 billion in Clean Energy Equipment Manufacturing tax credits that will partner with private investment to increase our capacity to manufacture wind turbines, solar panels, electric vehicles, and other clean energy components domestically.¹³  

2. 2. Human Capital.  Investing in the knowledge and skill base of tomorrow’s workers is as important as making sure they have the tools and infrastructure they need to compete in a global economy.  The ARRA allocated more than $50 billion directly to schools, students, and worker training.¹⁴ For example, the Act made an extra $17 billion available through Pell grants and work-study programs to help make college more affordable.  It increased funding for early childhood education by $3 billion, and it sent $650 million to schools to help integrate the use of technology into 21st-century curricula.  And, the Act sent $25 billion directly to elementary and secondary schools across the country that face particular educational challenges. 

3. 3. Construction of Transportation Infrastructure.  The Recovery Act provided $30 billion to fund much-needed infrastructure improvements in thousands of communities across the country.  Earlier this year, the Federal Highway Administration announced that it had finished obligating more than $26 billion for 12,000 road, highway, and bridge projects, and in June President Obama visited Columbus, Ohio to commemorate the breaking of ground on the 10,000th such project.  Not only do these projects put Americans to work, but in many cases they will improve road safety and save hours of commuting time by easing congestion.  The ARRA is also making investments in the Nation’s air and sea transportation infrastructure.  This includes $1.3 billion to construct new runways and improve air traffic control facilities and equipment.  Finally, it is important to note that more than $18 billion in support for traditional transit and high-speed rail are classified in the clean energy category since these projects will help reduce our dependence on gas-run cars, but they can equally be thought of as improving transportation infrastructure.

    4. Health and Health IT.  The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Obama in March will reduce costs, improve quality and expand access to health care over the coming decade.  The Recovery Act jump-started this transition with $32 billion in investments in health care delivery and technology that have begun to pay off already.  The Act provided $2 billion to community health centers, allowing these centers to improve their facilities and hire extra staff with the potential to reach millions of new patients (see Box IV.1). 

    See Box IV.1. Recovery Act Investments in Community Health Centers

1. The Recovery Act also included an estimated $26 billion for Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH), to make progress on the Nation’s transition to health information technology (IT) by 2014.  The majority of HITECH funding will be spent on Medicare and Medicaid incentive payments for physicians and hospitals who achieve “meaningful use” of health IT systems.  In order to qualify for these payments, providers will have to meet IT standards that promote quality, efficiency and safety -- for instance, by using electronic health records to automatically check for adverse drug interactions.  Because payment is conditional on providers demonstrating performance, the HITECH incentive payment outlays will occur beginning in 2011 even though providers may have already begun to upgrade their networks.  In addition, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology is spending $2 billion on HITECH programs to facilitate expanded use of health IT. 

2. The HITECH provisions of the Recovery Act are not just technology investments, but efforts to achieve the major goals of health reform:  quality improvement and cost reduction.  Diffusion of health IT will improve quality of care by reducing errors, allowing for new quality metrics, and enabling payment based on provider performance.  Investments in health IT will also reduce the cost of care by eliminating redundant tests, promoting coordination across providers, and allowing for new payment models that reward coordination.

    5. Construction of Buildings.  The housing crisis set off a collapse in building construction that eliminated more than 2 million construction jobs from the pre-recession peak, one of the sharpest percentage contractions in any industry.  To help stabilize employment in the sector, and to expand affordable housing options for families that may have lost their homes to foreclosure, the Recovery Act invested more than $10 billion in affordable housing in communities across America.  One program provides grant funding for capital investment in low-income housing, and is anticipated to help underwrite 35,000 new affordable housing units.  $2 billion is being channeled through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program in the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to purchase and redevelop foreclosed and abandoned homes in communities that have felt the foreclosure crisis hit particularly hard.  Finally, the Act created a new tax credit bond program through which the Federal government pays 100 percent of the interest costs on up to $11 billion in new bond issues for school construction financing in both 2009 and 2010.  To date, states and localities have issued more than 350 bonds through the program with a total face value of more than $3.5 billion.  In all, the Act included $31 billion for residential and commercial construction.  

3. 6.  Environmental Cleanup and Preservation.  The Recovery Act made a $23 billion investment in the Nation’s environment.  The Act provides $6 billion to recapitalize states’ clean water and drinking water revolving funds, providing financing for 3,000 projects that will lead to cleaner water and safer drinking water.  For example, the town of Fairhaven, MA will install an anaerobic digestion and cogeneration system to convert waste into methane gas, which it can use for power generation.  This will eliminate the need for the current costly practice of trucking sewer waste to an off-site location in Rhode Island and save the town an estimated $260,000 per year.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is using another $600 million to help clean up Superfund sites.  The Superfund program implements cleanup plans for abandoned hazardous waste sites.  EPA already maintains a National Priority List of sites, which allowed the agency to obligate nearly the entire $600 million within 8 months of the Act’s passage.  In total, Recovery Act funding will initiate or accelerate work at 51 Superfund sites, providing jobs immediately and accelerating the return of the sites to productive use.  At the Department of the Interior, Recovery Act dollars are helping to restore landscapes and habitat, reduce the likelihood of wildfires and floods, and perform needed maintenance in our National Parks.  Finally, the Army Corps of Engineers received more than $4 billion for a variety of upkeep and restoration projects.

4. 7.  Scientific Research.  To ensure that America remains a world leader in innovation and technological discovery, President Obama announced in April 2009 the goal of boosting total national research and development (R&D) expenditures to 3 percent of GDP.  As a down payment on that effort, the Recovery Act is providing $18 billion for scientific research -- $10 billion for cutting-edge medical research through the National Institutes of Health, $3 billion to the National Science Foundation, and funding for research programs at NASA, the Department of Commerce, and the Department of Defense.  These investments will help us better understand the world we live in -- for example by funding the Ocean Observatories Initiative that will place hundreds of undersea sensors as far down as the ocean floor, giving scientists, students, and the public unprecedented new data on the physical systems of oceans -- and better understand ourselves—with grants to build a new Genome Data Center at the Washington University School of Medicine and to fund cancer research.  This category does not include scientific research related to the clean energy transformation, such as the $400 million Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) program that funds creative research ideas aimed at accelerating the pace of innovation in advanced energy technologies, as this research is included in the category of Clean Energy.

5. 8.  Economic Development.  The ARRA recognized that development of businesses and communities will play a vital role in our economic recovery.  Thus the Act contains $14 billion to help businesses obtain loans and communities rebuild.  The Act channels $900 million to community financial institutions, the Small Business Administration, and rural credit organizations to make loans to qualifying businesses.  The Economic Development Administration in the Department of Commerce received another $147 million to give directly to projects that promote regional economic development.  Importantly, and as described in the next section, many of these programs required private participation, so that the total amount of economic activity supported far surpasses the cost to the Federal government.  This category also contains a number of tax programs designed to stimulate investment.  For example, through the end of June local governments had issued more than 1,400 Build America Bonds that contain a 35 percent interest subsidy funded by the Federal government.  Build America Bonds are being used to support individual projects that fall into almost all of the categories listed here, including school construction, environment, public safety, hospital construction, transportation, and housing.
       
   9.  Public Safety and Defense.  The Recovery Act is spending $7.6 billion to keep our borders secure and our communities safe.  More than $500 million will go to local airports and transportation authorities for aviation security infrastructure and technologies.  The Department of Justice’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) received $1 billion to pay up to 3 years of full salary and benefits for newly hired law enforcement officers or to rehire officers who had been laid off due to budget cuts.  The program received more than 7,000 applications from local law enforcement agencies within two months of the Recovery Act’s passage, and made 1,046 awards that will keep an additional 4,699 police officers on the streets.  The Office of Justice Programs will allocate another $2 billion to support state and local law enforcement agencies in high crime areas.        

6. 10.  Broadband.  One important goal of the Recovery Act is to increase access to and drive adoption of broadband across America.  An estimated 35 percent of Americans do not have a high speed internet connection, and are thus disconnected from important educational and economic opportunities.  The Recovery Act aims to address this challenge, by including $7.2 billion to upgrade the Nation’s broadband infrastructure.  As part of the appropriation, $4.7 billion was provided to the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to deploy broadband infrastructure, support computer centers, and encourage adoption of broadband.  The remaining $2.5 billion was directed to the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) to expand broadband access in rural areas.

7. The RUS’s Broadband Initiatives Program and NTIA’s Broadband Technology Opportunities Program together received more than 3,800 applications requesting more than $52 billion in support for potential projects in all 50 states and territories.  As of July 2, 2010, NTIA had invested $1.7 billion in 165 projects impacting 54 states and territories, the vast majority of which will be spent on building and improving 50,000 miles of broadband infrastructure in underserved communities.  For example, the Mid-Atlantic Broadband Cooperative won funding from NTIA to connect 120 schools to fiber networks in rural Virginia with the expectation of creating potentially 200 jobs as the project progresses.¹⁵ Moreover, over $1.4 billion had been awarded by USDA’s RUS to 105 broadband projects in 37 states and one territory.

B.  Classification Methodology

To describe the breakdown of the public investment spending provisions of the ARRA among these categories, we began with the nearly 300 Treasury Account Financing Symbol (TAFS) codes shown in the Agency Financial and Activity Reports available on Recovery.gov.  After removing TAFS codes for the programs in the categories other than public investment spending shown in Table 2, we assigned each remaining TAFS code to one of the 10 categories above, or to an eleventh “other” category containing programs that do not fit elsewhere. 

Separately, we assigned tax programs (which are not tracked in the Agency reports) that function similarly to public investment spending to one of the 10 categories.  The key feature of these programs is that entities claim the tax benefits only when the associated spending occurs.  For example, the Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit provides a 30 percent tax credit for investments in clean energy manufacturing.  Hence, the credit is functionally equivalent to the Federal government directly spending $3 million to help cover the cost of a $10 million investment.  As this example shows, public investment through tax programs almost always also involves some co-investment from a non-Federal entity. The broad range of programs in the Recovery Act with this co-investment feature is discussed in Section V.

The total appropriation for each category, as well as obligations and outlays through June 2010, are shown in Table 10.¹⁶ Through the second quarter of 2010, two-thirds of the public investment spending had been obligated and more than one-quarter had been outlayed.

Table 11 provides a different breakdown of the public investment spending in the Recovery Act, categorizing it by agency rather than by functional category.  Appropriations to six agencies plus the tax programs account for four-fifths of the total, reflecting the prioritization of health IT (Department of Health and Human Services), infrastructure rebuilding (Department of Transportation and Department of Housing and Urban Development), support for education (Department of Education), and clean energy (mostly Department of Energy) in the Act. 

The table also shows that of the money not yet obligated, more than half belongs to either HHS (almost all of which is for health IT, as described above) or to tax programs.  For the tax programs, the apparent lag merely reflects how we measure “obligations” for tax provisions.  In particular, the Office of Tax Analysis estimates the timing of the cost to the government of the tax provisions, which corresponds to the concept of outlays in the agency reports.  Since there is no separate concept of obligations for tax programs, we also use the cost to date of tax provisions as a proxy for obligations in Tables 10 and 11.  However, in many cases the tax credit beneficiary qualifies for the credit and commences the economic activity well before the government experiences the reduction in revenue or makes the tax outlay.  With the Build America Bonds, for example, the cost to the government of a bond issue gets recorded as the 35 percent interest subsidy each year over the life of the bond, while the economic activity funded by the bond issue may begin immediately.

C. The Short-Run Macroeconomic Effects of Public Investment Spending

The public investment spending projects in the ARRA have already begun the clean energy, health, and human capital transformations that will benefit the economy for years to come.  At the same time, the $86 billion outlayed for public investment spending projects through the second quarter of 2010, and $211 billion obligated, has put Americans to work fixing roads, retrofitting homes, and restoring the environment. 

To estimate the short-run jobs impact of the ARRA’s public investment spending provisions, we use the CEA macroeconomic model described in Section III.B.  We take the actual path of public investment spending outlays and tax reductions in each quarter and then use the model to simulate the impact of these expenditures on GDP and employment.  Figure 5 shows that the pace of public investment spending has increased, with the total outlays in 2010:Q2 by far the largest to date.  This pattern was expected, as it takes time for agencies to identify worthwhile projects and sign contracts, and in many cases the outlays are not actually recorded until after the project has been completed.

Table 12 provides our estimates of the jobs impact by public investment spending category.  The first two columns show the estimated total impact on employment (of all types) in 2010:Q1 and 2010:Q2.  We estimate that the ARRA public investment spending provisions raised aggregate employment by more than 800,000 jobs as of the second quarter of 2010.  The largest impacts derive from the clean energy, human capital, and transportation infrastructure categories.  Our estimates also indicate that the Recovery Act created 30 percent more jobs in the public investment spending categories in the second quarter than in the first quarter.  This is consistent with the fact that the public investment component of the Act has increased substantially this summer as projects that have been in the planning stages have moved into active construction.

Spending at a point in time leads gradually to increases in GDP and employment, beginning with the direct employment effects and then, later, extending to the induced effects.   Hence, to get a sense of the total near- and medium-term economic impact of the public investment spending provisions, column 3 of Table 12 shows the total job-years estimated to be saved or created by public investment spending through the end of 2012.  A job-year is the equivalent of one worker employed for one year.  To put these numbers in perspective, the CEA estimated that the ARRA would save or create 3.5 million jobs as of 2010:Q4, and 6.8 million job-years through the end of 2012 (CEA 2009a).¹⁷   Column 3 shows that the public investment spending provisions will create more than 3 million of these job-years. 

Of course, these figures are only estimates.  The margin of error for estimates for specific programs from the CEA model is relatively large, and the number of public investment spending jobs -- either in 2010:Q2 or over the life of the Act -- could be somewhat smaller or larger than is indicated here.  Nevertheless, it is clear that the Act is successfully putting Americans to work today to make the investments needed for tomorrow’s economy.

D.  A Focus on Transportation Infrastructure Spending

Infrastructure spending is one of the largest forms of public investment included in the Recovery Act.  Because transportation infrastructure spending makes up a large portion of total infrastructure spending in the Act, it serves as an illustrative example of the scope and effectiveness of the infrastructure component.  In this section, we examine the impact of transportation infrastructure spending.  We describe the range of projects funded to give a sense of the long-term benefit of this type of spending.  We use simple regression analysis and tabulations from the recipient reports to gain insight into the timeliness of expenditure and the effects on employment.

Range of Transportation Infrastructure Projects Funded by the Recovery Act

We focus on the Recovery Act spending through the Department of Transportation (DOT).  We classify the Recovery Act investments of the DOT into five categories:  highway, street, and bridge construction; passenger rail; public transit; air and sea projects; and TIGER grants, the DOT’s competitive grant program for a wide range of transportation projects.  Table 13 shows the breakdown of spending by type of transportation infrastructure.¹⁸

The projects within the categories of the DOT Recovery Act funding cover a variety of infrastructure spending from highway improvement to airport runway construction to high-speed rail:

1. 1.  Highway, Street, and Bridge Construction.  The largest component of the transportation spending portion of the ARRA is highway, street, and bridge construction.  More than $26 billion has been obligated to road, highway, and bridge projects.  One of the largest highway projects is the Sepulveda Pass widening project in Los Angeles.  This project will add 10 miles of high-occupancy-vehicle (HOV) lane to the San Diego Freeway (I-405), increasing capacity along one of the most clogged transportation arteries in America as well as supporting 18,000 jobs.

2. 2.  Passenger Rail.  The ARRA appropriated more than $9 billion for passenger rail projects.  $8 billion will be used for high-speed passenger rail infrastructure development.  This funding is an important part of Congress and the Administration’s plan to improve travel in the United States and will lay the groundwork for 13 high-speed rail corridors spanning 22 states.  An additional $1.3 billion was awarded to Amtrak to invest in projects that will improve its railroad infrastructure and expand passenger rail capacity.  These investments in passenger rail will meet the growing demand for inter-city passenger rail transportation while reducing national dependence on oil and creating clean, energy-efficient transportation solutions.

3. 3.  Public Transit.  About $9 billion has been appropriated to public transit projects in both urban and non-urban areas.  The ARRA has funded a wide variety of public transit projects such as:  the construction of a new bus maintenance and operations facility in Raleigh, NC that is needed to accommodate a growing bus fleet; the rehabilitation of the ramps for the St. George Ferry in New York City, which provides a direct connection from Staten Island to Manhattan for 60,000 daily riders; and the purchase of five GILLIG 30’ low-floor hybrid-electric buses -- which use as much as 35 percent less fuel than standard diesel buses -- in Montgomery, AL.  $750 million of the public transit funds are reserved for modernizing existing fixed guideway systems (such as subways and trolley cars).  Another $750 million is being used to improve rail and bus lines in several cities.

4. 4.  Air and Sea Projects.  The Recovery Act appropriated $1.4 billion to air and sea projects that will provide immediate construction jobs as well as provide long-term benefits.  Airports in nearly 300 municipalities across the Nation have been awarded grants.  The money will be used to fund much-needed projects, including the refurbishment of 18 air traffic control centers that are more than 40 years old.  The ARRA funds will also support capital investments and workforce training to expand the shipbuilding productivity of small shipyards by improving efficiency and by increasing capacity to work on larger ships.

5. 5.  TIGER Grants.  The final component of the transportation funds comprises $1.5 billion of discretionary grants for the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) program, which is intended to support major capital infrastructure investments that will provide long-term economic benefits.  One recipient is the National Gateway Freight Rail Corridor, where the grant will be used to double rail capacity on a major freight rail corridor serving Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Maryland with no increase in noise, emissions or train length. 

The Rate of Obligations and Outlays

Of the total $48.1 billion that was appropriated for the Department of Transportation, $37.9 billion (or 79 percent) has been obligated.  The rate is even higher in particular categories.  For example, 99 percent of the funds appropriated to public transit have been obligated to almost one thousand projects.

The recipient reports provide a way of digging deeper into the timing of the construction projects.  Each individual project is an observation in the recipient reported data, which include the award date and whether economic activity had yet been generated in the reporting quarter (as measured by the production of jobs).  Table 14 shows how many projects have been awarded funds in each quarter.  As described above, the recipient reports are only available through the first quarter of 2010. 

The timing of project awards suggests the existence of “shovel-ready” projects:  almost 2,000 transportation projects had been awarded more than $8 billion by the end of March 2009, just six weeks after the Recovery Act was passed.¹⁹   As of the end of March 2010, nearly 14,000 projects had been awarded.  Of these, more than 12,000 were road, highway, and bridge projects.  More than 300 were airport projects for the modernization of runways and other airport infrastructure.

Transportation infrastructure tends to spread economic activity over a longer period of time than other forms of stimulus.  First, not all infrastructure projects are shovel-ready.  Some projects, in particular those requiring large-scale coordination among civil engineers and municipalities, take time to set up and evaluate.  Of the $10 billion that has not yet been obligated, $8 billion is for high-speed rail.  For these projects, environmental, engineering, and design work must be done before construction can begin. 

The key reason that infrastructure spending spreads economic activity over long periods is that, unlike other forms of stimulus such as tax cuts, infrastructure spending cannot be outlayed immediately and projects take substantial time to complete even after obligations are made.  Although to date 79 percent of appropriations have been obligated to specific projects, only 31 percent of appropriations have been outlayed as of June 30, 2010 (see Table 13).  58 percent of projects that were awarded in the first quarter of 2009 were still not complete in the first quarter of 2010.  As outlays are spent over the next few quarters to meet obligations, job creation from transportation infrastructure is likely to rise considerably.

Employment Impact of Transportation Infrastructure Projects

An important question is how effective transportation infrastructure investment has been at increasing employment.  We perform a simple analysis of the direct effect of the ARRA transportation investments on employment by looking at the relationship between DOT ARRA outlays per construction worker in each state and the change in construction employment in each state.  The ARRA outlay data come from the agency financial activity reports.  We use employment data from the Current Employment Statistics (the standard source of timely data on payroll employment) for heavy and civil engineering construction (NAICS code 237).  The employment data we use are not available seasonally-adjusted, so we use the change from May 2009 to May 2010 to avoid seasonal issues while using the most up-to-date data available.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ strict disclosure requirements and small sample limitations mean that the Bureau reports employment for this category for only 33 states. 

Figure 6 shows a strong positive relationship between the DOT funds outlayed in a state and the change in heavy and civil engineering construction employment (which includes highway, street, and bridge construction) in that state.  The regression line, which is drawn in, has a positive slope coefficient that is highly statistically significant.
 
It is important to note that this regression only measures direct jobs produced by the construction projects within a narrow sector of the economy.  More direct jobs will be produced in other sectors because some of the expenses of the projects will directly employ workers outside of the NAICS 237 category.  Furthermore, this simple scatter plot does not capture any of the indirect or induced jobs produced by the infrastructure spending.  Construction is particularly capital intensive, which is likely to make the ratio of indirect and induced jobs to direct jobs higher than in less capital intensive sectors.

The most recent recipient-reported data are for the first quarter of 2010.  Because of a high seasonality of construction in cold states, the reported jobs from the first quarter, which includes two winter months, are a poor measure of the direct jobs created by infrastructure spending.  Recipient data for the second quarter of 2010 will be released on July 30.

Overall, the relationship shown in Figure 6 is not surprising; more transportation infrastructure funds yields more direct jobs in this narrow sector of the economy.  But, because the relationship is between ARRA spending and total employment in this sector, it indicates that the ARRA funds have not just crowded out investment that would have happened anyway.  The Recovery Act raised employment overall in the construction sector.  Furthermore, the Current Employment Statistics data for heavy construction only measures private jobs, and thus the relationship shown above suggests that the job creation from Recovery Act infrastructure spending was not limited to the government sector.  Rather, it has had a significant positive effect on private employment.

Continue to V. Provisions of the Recovery Act the Leverage Other Spending

¹¹ These provisions also share the feature that the cost to the government corresponds directly to the occurrence of economic activity.  For that reason, they all receive the same economic multiplier in the CEA model.  The category does not include other business tax incentives such as bonus depreciation.   

¹² Office of the Vice President (2010).

¹³ These numbers differ slightly from those in CEA (2009b) because of updated cost estimates from OTA.

¹⁴ This total excludes the $53 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund that went through state governments.

¹⁵ Engebretson (2010).

¹⁶ For spending programs, the appropriation corresponds to the 10-year cost as estimated in CBO (2009) at the Act’s passage.  For revenue appropriations, we use the Office of Tax Analysis’s estimated cost through 2020 as calculated for the FY2011 Mid-Session Review. 

¹⁷ CEA (2010a) estimated total job-years through 2012 resulting from spending in the clean energy sector as 719,600.  The new estimate reflects the increase in total clean energy tax provisions and updated assumptions on the timing of agency outlays and tax costs.

¹⁸ This table includes all transportation infrastructure funded through the Department of Transportation.  In the classification in Table 10, some transportation infrastructure funding is included in the clean energy category.

¹⁹ Although the recipient reports allow us to observe in what month projects were awarded funds, we cannot similarly observe exactly when the outlays began to start; the recipient reported data only allow such calculations starting in 2009:Q3 when the first recipient reports were due.  Through 2009:Q3, roughly $1.6 billion of ARRA funds were expended in the 1,835 transportation projects that had been awarded funds in 2009:Q1.