Stimulus Funds Spent, but Where Are Jobs?

BILOXI, Miss., July 20, 2009— -- The ongoing troubled state of the economy was clearly and instantly on display at the annual summer gathering of the non-partisan National Governors Association which is taking place on the Mississippi Gulf Coast this year.

Fewer than half of the nation's 50 governors attended the gathering this year, including the group's chairman, Gov. Ed Rendell, D-Penn.

Before introducing a videotaped message from Rendell, the incoming NGA chairman, Gov. Jim Douglas, R-Vt., opened the first session on Saturday by stating Rendell needed to stay put in Harrisburg to deal with his state's "economic and fiscal crisis."

The appearance of taking a taxpayer-funded trip down to a casino/resort hotel on the gulf coast and how that would play back home was also likely to be weighing on the minds of many governors who chose not to attend the meeting.

The $787 billion federal stimulus package passed in February with a total of three Republican votes was aimed at easing the fiscal and economic dire straits faced by the states. Five months since President Obama signed the bill into law, several governors said the results have been mixed and that it's still too early to measure the full effects of the stimulus.

"Everybody's dealing with these miserable budget decisions and as hard as they are, they'd be worse without the money that comes into operations," said Gov. Deval Patrick, D-Mass., as he pointed to the critical Medicaid and education funding that helped plug state budget holes across the nation.

"We've been able not just to hold public education harmless," Patrick said. "It's at record levels."

The education spending, for example, required by the federal strings attached to the stimulus bill, is precisely what has some governors worried when the money dries up at the end of 2010.

"We wish we had been given more flexibility in how to spend it. We would have spent it a little different," said Gov. Haley Barbour, R-Mo., the hosting governor of the meeting and a potential presidential candidate in 2012. "We still would have spent a lot of money in education. But we would have spent some money so that the cuts in other agencies wouldn't have been as big. That, today, isn't a big deal. What is a big deal is two years from now. We've put education spending on such a high cliff and there's no way we'll be able to keep it there," he said.