I think the Federal, State, and local governments are trying to work very hard together.

The government set up a Web site called Recovery.gov, and as of last Thursday, when I held my second hearing on this in Washington, the Web site had received over 300 million hits since about the middle of February when the Act was signed.

I do want to say how pleased I am that the Acting Comptroller General, Mr. Dodaro, is today going to release before this Committee his first bi-monthly report on State and local spending under the Stimulus Act.

The agencies are going to be actively involved in looking at that data along with their State recipient counterparts.

I cannot think of a better preparation for this job that he had than to be a State Senator.

I appreciate it, because obviously--and, of course, we will see some of this from the macro economic data, but we hope that the tax cuts will encourage people to spend, because consumption has been falling so fast and not driving our…

Part of why we want this money to be used to avoid the disastrous layoffs of teachers, for instance, is that, to say the obvious, you want to protect the jobs.

The usage is really miraculous or stunning.

Incidentally, I noticed that Congressman Ed Towns, who chairs our partner committee in the House, the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, is proposing legislation to separately fund State and local auditors to oversee stimulus…

I mean, it is hard to imagine that putting this much money out into the economy would not help some.

That is because we are facing an economic challenge the likes of which we have never faced before.

Yes, I think you are onto something, Senator Tester.

The danger of a jobless recovery remains all too real.

So on that chart, what jumps out at me, certainly, and I presume would at others, is that a relatively small proportion of that money is going to be spent in this fiscal year.

So you would say your minimal goal for the use of the Medicaid reimbursement or support that is part of this bill, is that there be no cutbacks in services available to anyone in the State eligible for Medicaid?

We share the burden of living up to the expectations of the American people and delivering the transparency and accountability and performance that we promised.

The whole reason for the Recovery Act was to create or save jobs.

We were really impressed, surprised, by the usage, the number of hits on the Recovery.gov Web site.

The unemployment level now is above what many economists predicted when we passed the stimulus in February.

We reacted in this emergency with an unprecedented spending program and a pressure to spend it quickly.

I appreciate what you are both doing, first to spend the money that we have appropriated.

history of fiscal stimulus is not always a happy one because a lot of times the moneys arrived after the economy has begun to recover.

I think you can expect Congress to get back in and mandate or speak more clearly in some areas of this law.

I presume, if I can draw you out on that, that would have meant significant layoffs of teachers and other school personnel.

this transparency that you will find on the Federal Web site and now on the State Web site is important for many reasons