After Months Of Drought, Stimulus Obligations Bounce Back

After three months of shrinking obligations, the stimulus pipeline is beginning to fill up again. The latest numbers from Recovery.gov show that stimulus money “in process”—funds committed to specific projects, but not yet spent—has started to tick upward again. ProPublica reported two weeks ago that the amount of money in process had peaked at $172 billion in October, only to fall consistently through the rest of the year.

But that trend has now reversed, at least for the moment. After dipping below $150 billion in last week’s numbers, the amount of stimulus dollars in process has now risen to $157 billion. That seems to be the result of federal agencies obligating more of their stimulus appropriations to specific projects: in the latest numbers, the amount of stimulus money that agencies have yet to obligate has fallen to $251 billion, from $267 billion last week. (You can see that information and more on our handy Stimulus Progress Bar.)

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