Tracking Stimulus Funds and their Impact: National and Regional

Recovery Act investments by USDA and their impact on

national, state, and local economies 

September 24, 2009

Cheryl L. Cook, Esq.Deputy Under SecretaryUSDA Rural Development

My Worst Grade in College was Statistics

Figures don't lie, but liars figure. - Samuel Clemens (alias Mark Twain)

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics. - Twain attributed this to Benjamin Disraeli

If your experiment needs statistics, you ought to have done a better experiment - Ernest Rutherford

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

• $28 billion in budget authority appropriated to USDA– $20 billion of that will be invested by the Food

and Nutrition Service through its SNAP and TEFAP programs

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

• $28 billion in budget authority appropriated to USDA– USDA’s Forest Service, Natural Resources

Conservation Service, and Agricultural Research Service also received funding for natural resource protection and agency modernization efforts

– USDA’s Farm Service Agency was able to provide farmers with needed operating capital, but also received funds to replace its vintage 1985 computer system

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

• $28 billion in budget authority appropriated to USDA– USDA Rural Development

• Three distinct agencies sharing one mission and one field delivery structure

• Rural Development offers over 40 separate programs; the Recovery Act largely doubled our funding in several of them

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

• $28 billion in budget authority appropriated to USDA– USDA Rural Development

• $4.5 billion in budget authority (BA)• $25.5 billion in program level (PL)• On top of 2009 Omnibus appropriations and 2008

disaster relief funding, all requiring separate accounting and data management

American Recovery and Reinvestment Act

• The Recovery Act provided a “first” for Rural Development in establishing a relationship between workload and administrative capacity to accomplish the workload– 3% of BA can be used for salaries and expenses– Tracking how these funds are used by 3 agency

heads and 47 state directors is crucial

Rural Utilities Service

• Broadband appears in the Recovery Act in two places: – $4.7 billion in BA for the National

Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA)

– $2.5 billion in BA for USDA Rural Development’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS)

Rural Utilities Service

• Broadband programs– NTIA funding is entirely in grants– RUS funding is a combination of loans and

grants, yielding about $9 billion in projects• RUS can award 100% grant funds to projects

serving areas that are both “rural” and “remote”– Because defining “rural” wasn’t complicated enough!

Rural Utilities Service

• Broadband programs– NTIA and RUS jointly issued the first of two

NOFAs in July:• 401 RUS-only applications

• 833 joint RUS/NTIA applications

Rural Utilities Service

• Water and Wastewater Disposal– $1.38 billion in Budget Authority– $3.05 in loans and grants for water treatment

and sewer projects

• We expect to reach the 500-project mark this month

Rural Housing Service

• Community Facilities – $130 million in BA– $1.17 billion in available loans, and $63 million

for grants

• Over 800 projects have been funded

Rural Housing Service

• Single Family Housing (direct loans and loan guarantees)– $130 million in BA for new loans and guarantees

– $200 million in BA for refinancing

– $11.5 billion in available loans and loan guarantees

• 66,631 home mortgages financed or refinanced by the end of last week

Rural Business – Cooperative Service

• Business & Industry Loan Guarantee program– $126 million in BA– $797 million in loan guarantee authority

• NOFA process rather than normal process– $50 million in projects selected for funding this

month, and we’re just starting

Rural Business – Cooperative Service

• Rural Business Enterprise Grants– $19.4 million of appropriated BA – Over 100 projects have received funding commitments

totaling $10.9 million

• Over 60 projects in more than 25 states were projects obligated in counties with persistent poverty, outmigration, high unemployment and underrepresented/underserved.

Data-Related Challenges

• Defining “Rural Area”• Telling the story – “What has the stimulus bill done for

me?”– Literally painting the picture through geospatial mapping now on

www.Recovery.gov and www.BroadbandUSA.gov

• Special provisions of the law regarding “Buy American” and prevailing wage requirements

• Persistent poverty requirements (10% of BA)• Recipient reporting requirements

USDA Milestones

• A few of the landmarks the Department achieved through the first 200 days include: – USDA committed nearly $1.64 billion in funding for

454 water or sewer projects in 48 states to help spur economic development and improve the quality of life for more than 4.8 million rural residents

– USDA made 59,000 loans to help rural residents build, repair, renovate, or relocate their homes

– USDA announced $234 million for Community Facilities projects totaling nearly 800 projects

USDA Milestones

– USDA increased SNAP benefits so that the 34 million Americans who rely on assistance to help put food on the table are seeing an extra $80 per month going to the average family of four

– USDA announced $100 million for 5,021 school districts using the National School Lunch Program

– USDA distributed 2,600 loans worth $173 million to help famers buy the seed, feed and fuel they needed to plant this spring and stimulate rural economies.

USDA Milestones

– USDA announced more than 100 projects with funding worth nearly $200 million to protect watersheds, rehabilitate aging dams, mitigate flooding and improve water quality

– USDA began maintenance work on 400 miles of trails in our national forest, creating jobs while protecting watersheds and local ecosystems

– USDA treated approximately 40,000 acres of forest land to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildland fire

Impacts• Economic

– Public and private sector jobs• Standardized estimating tool for direct/indirect job figures

• Growing appreciation of job retention

– Revenues• Income taxes – 43 states

• Real Estate Transfer taxes – 37 states

• Property taxes – municipalities in all 50 states

• Sales taxes – 45 states

Impacts• Non-economic

– Quantifying the value of staying in your home– Building and measuring consumer confidence – Quantifying the community benefits of stable

home ownership, libraries, emergency services, and decent schools with broadband access

– Quantifying the community benefits of opportunities for rural entrepreneurs and youth

Does USDA Rural Development Depend on Timely Access to

Reliable Data?

• 99.8% of the time, yes.