ABC News Exclusive: The White House Touts Its Stimulating Abilities

Sept. 16, 2010 — -- Even before the first shovel went into the ground on a project funded by the Obama administration's $814 billion stimulus plan, the program was under attack from Republicans who have called it a waste of taxpayer money. But now the White House is fighting back.

A new report obtained exclusively by ABC News outlines the administration's top 100 stimulus projects -- a greatest hits compilation of what the White House considers the best examples of the stimulus in action.

"Republicans have often criticized the Recovery Act without recognizing projects specifically like the ones in this report," White House economist Jared Bernstein said in an interview with ABC News. "If you look at these projects, these are the ones that help plant the seeds for significant job opportunities for the middle class moving forward."

The report, entitled "100 Recovery Act Projects That are Changing America," highlights projects nationwide that the White House says are putting people back to work now and transforming the country's economy for years to come. The full report will be unveiled Friday by Vice President Biden.

The report highlights projects like the cleanup of an industrial park in South Plainfield, N.J. Thanks to $30 million in stimulus dollars, a wasteland contaminated by an old electronics plant is being transformed into a new industrial park. The White House says the project has already created 68 jobs and will be an economic boon to the South Plainfield area once it is completed next year.

"We are creating employment, getting folks in there, cleaning up that environment and this will be a new industrial park creating hundreds of thousands of jobs for decades to come," Bernstein told ABC News.

Cancer research is another job-creating stimulus project the White House is celebrating. The Recovery Act poured nearly $154 million into the Cancer Genome Atlas Project, an effort to beef up cancer research at 15 research institutions around the country. The White House says more than 150 scientists will be involved.