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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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)
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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!
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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Does USDA Rural Development Depend on Timely Access to
Reliable Data?
• 99.8% of the time, yes.