Blogging HR1: Division A, Title 2
Amount Appropriated Thus Far: $34,413,500,000
Title II — Agriculture, Nutrition, and Rural Development marks the true beginning of stimulus spending in the original House bill. Up until this point, all of the spending has been on administrative overhead and fraud prevention. Curiously enough, most of the spending in this Title is on loans to low-income homeowners; apparently, there’s a rural version of HUD. There’s also a surprising amount dedicated towards various IT projects, which, being an IT guy myself, I find strangely exciting, if a little worrisome. Here’s an itemized list:
- $44,000,000 on “Agriculture Buildings and Facilities and Rental Payments” - interestingly, the funding for this is exempt from Section 1106, which assigns funds for oversight.
- $209,000,000 on “Buildings and Facilities”, for “work on deferred maintenance at Agricultural Research Services facilities”.
- $245,000,000 for “Salaries and Expenses”, for “the purpose of maintaining and modernizing the information technology system” of the Farm Service Agency. Section 1106 doesn’t apply here, either. I, for one, would love to work on an IT project with no budget assigned for oversight, especially one with a multi-million dollar budget.
- $350,000,000 for “Watershed and Flood Prevention Operations”, of which $175,000,000 would be used to purchase floodplain easements. This is yet another appropriation that isn’t subject to Section 1106.
- $50,000,000 to the “Watershed Rehabilitation Program” to fix various structures (levees and the like). It’s also Section 1106-exempt.
- $5,838,000,000 of direct and guaranteed loans for the “rural community advancement program”, including $1,102,000,000 for rural community facilities, $2,000,000,000 for business and industry, and $2,736,000,000 for rural water and waste disposal, plus another $1,800,000,000 in loans and grants, apportioned out to the various causes listed here. Instead of Section 1106, the Secretary of Agriculture can assign up to 3% of the money listed here for oversight, loan guarantees, and the like.
- $22,129,000,000 for loans to Section 502 (the Rural Homeownership Loan Program) borrowers. Section 502 loans money to low-income individuals in rural areas for housing assistance - think Little HUD on the Prairie. This is the biggest spending item in this section. The good news here is that, if you’re already over your head in mortgage payments, you can dig yourself into a deeper hole by also owing the government money. Exciting, isn’t it?
- $2,825,000,000 to roll out broadband to rural areas. Keep in mind that this money would be under the Department of Agriculture - there are numerous departments that will ultimately be responsible for providing broadband to rural areas, a situation that the Senate is working hard to exacerbate. Amusingly, most of the people this money would “help” don’t even want high-speed Internet access; obviously, spending money on infrastructure that people don’t even want certainly won’t help the popularity of this bill any.
- $100,000,000 for “management information systems” for WIC.
- $150,000,000 for the “emergency food assistance program”.
- $300,000,000 for administrative costs to handle everything listed above. Section 1106 doesn’t apply here.
So, to summarize, we’re looking at north of $20 billion in housing loan bailouts, a few billion in infrastructure payouts (broadband for the Amish!), and a substantial amount in IT spending. There are going to be some happy and wealthy IT directors in our federal government for the next couple of years… I wonder what their pension plans look like?
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HR1, politics, pork | David Colborne | 
February 9, 2009 10:43 am
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