This is Your Budget on Stimulus

To learn just how the nearly $800 billion in stimulus spending is affecting agencies, consider this graph below. This is one slide from a presentation that Christine Shafik, director of the Office of Internal Review at the Energy Department, gave back in June at a conference for top federal executives. It shows just how much the budgets for certain offices within the Energy Department grew this year due to the stimulus bill -- money that federal employees must give out in grants and contracts. For the Office of Electricity Delivery, Shafik said the group was scheduled to receive just $100 ,000 million in fiscal 2009 -- which was being targeted to be closed -- but the stimulus bill gave the small staff there a huge amount of work to do by giving it $4.5 billion to dole out. The work is daunting for most offices trying to get the money out fast and within guidelines, Shafik told the audience.