The economic stimulus bill that Congress is debating with the Obama administration could reach $850bn or more.<\/p>\n
That is a lot of money to spend, and there is an understandable fear that much of it could be wasted. From New Orleans to Iraq, the Bush administration showed that without oversight, even well-financed federal programmes can flounder. A government history of the American-led reconstruction in Iraq is calling the effort a $100bn failure.<\/p>\n
But we should not assume that failure is inherent in any large government programme. The New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), which spent over $11bn from 1935 to 1941, and the Truman administration’s Marshall Plan, which spent over $13bn between 1948 and 1952, might have easily been riddled by corruption. Yet, they never were because Congress built in checks and balances for these programmes, which in today’s dollars would amount to roughly $100bn each.<\/p>\n