I had a specific question about the 2009 economic stimulus package.  I hopped right on the Google train and crafted a precise search, sure that I’d find out exactly what I wanted to know.  I didn’t get an answer.  None of the first 20 sites on the list provided anything close to genuine information about my specific question.  Not even close.

Instead, I found myself looking at a collection of extremely opinionated sites and blogs that were more interested in ax grinding than in providing real information about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  There were those on the far left who decried the bill as an Obama sell-out.  There were those on the right who seemed to think that calling it “porkulus” is so clever and who pepper every other sentence with “socialism” or “communism”.  The mainstream left seemed to be more interested trumpeting imminent success of the legislation than in discussing its actual composition.  The mainstream right wanted to discuss deficit spending–not the actual components of the bill.

It made me wonder.  Where can you actually get information about the economic stimulus in detail?  You know, real information about what’s in the law, as opposed to opinion about the legislation in general terms or specific attacks/praises of a few individual provisions…  There’s plenty of healthy (and unhealthy, for that matter) debate out there about the package, but the actual provisions of the law are drowned out in all of the screaming, smarminess and editorializing.

Don’t get me wrong.  I like opinions.  I have a few myself.  I like sharing them, too.  I enjoy a vigorous debate.  Sometimes, though, you just want a little factual information without all of the hollering.

In hopes of putting folks in touch with a little bit of that, I’ve compiled a brief list of where you can get some relatively straightforward information about the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Here’s where you can learn about the economic stimulus package in detail…without too much editorializing.

The Full Text of the Law. Sometimes, you need to take a long look directly into the horse’s mouth.  You can read the whole law.  It’s provided in PDF form, so make sure you have the latest installation of Acrobat up and running.  If you’re not interested in wading through all 400+ pages of the online version of the bill, you can search the PDF.  The search tool is surprisingly fast, considering the size of the document and seems to work well.

Bubble Chart and Other Graphics. If you’d like to see a breakdown of how the stimulus money is being spent, you can take a look at the bubble chart from Recovery.org.  Obviously, this is coming from the current Admininstration which means that it was drawn up by a supporter of the law.  As such, you have some language choices with which not everyone would agree.  However, the bubble chart breakdown, the per state distribution map and the list of expenditures on a per agency basis are all seemingly solid sources of core information about the law.

Another Graphical Breakdown. Here’s a more detailed graphical representation of where the stimulus money is going.  The overall accuracy seems good, though I’m sure we could argue over details.  The trick here is to scroll to the right as you evaluate the information.  It’s an interesting way of showing how resources are to be distributed.

Read the Stimulus. This site was originally set up while the law was still under consideration.  It called for greater transparency during the deliberative process.  Today, you can still use the site to search the full text of the ARRA.  You can do that with the official government PDF, too, but this does seem a little quicker and may be a welcome alternative for those who don’t like dealing with PDFs.

There are a number of reports available dealing with individual provisions of the economic stimulus package in detail, as well.   Once you pinpoint the aspects of the law using a search of the full text of the law, these become much easier to find.

If you want specific information about the actual provisions and details of the ARRA or just need an overall picture of what it actually contains–not what people think about its politics or the likelihood of its success–you may want to start with the above-mentioned resources.  Sometimes it’s nice to just find out what’s really in there instead of dealing with folks on both sides of the political divide claiming that an apocolypse/massive economic boom are on the immediate horizon!