About ARRA

On February13, 2009, Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, which was signed into law, by President Obama on February 17, 2009. A direct response to the economic crisis, the ARRA has three immediate goals:

1. Create new jobs as well as save existing ones;
2. Spur economic activity and invest in long-term economic growth;
AND
3. Foster unprecedented levels of accountability and transparency in government spending.

ARRA intends to achieve those goals by:

• Providing $288 billion in tax cuts and benefits for millions of working families and businesses.
  
  
• Increasing federal funds for education and health care as well as entitlement programs (such as extending unemployment benefits) by $224 billion.



• Making $275 billion available for federal contracts, grants and loans.



• Requiring recipients of Recovery funds to report quarterly on the amount of monies spent, the status of the project, the number of jobs created and/or saved, and other details, all of which are posted on www.Recovery.gov so that the public can track where the total $787 billion ARRA funds are going and how they were spent.

In addition to offering financial aid directly to local school districts, expanding the Child Tax Credit, and underwriting a process to computerize health records to reduce medical errors and save on health care costs, ARRA was targeted at infrastructure development and enhancement. For instance, ARRA invested in the domestic renewable energy industry and the weatherizing of 75 percent of federal buildings as well as more than one million private homes around the country.